BANCROFT 
LIBRARY 

o- 

THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 


THE  DESTINY  OF  '1HE  RAGES  OF  THIS  CONTINENT. 


AN     ADDRESS 


DELIVERED    BEFORE    THE 


MERCANTILE  LIBRARY  ASSOCIATION 


OF 


BOSTON,     MASSACHUSETTS 


ON  THE  26th  OF  JANUARY,  1859. 


BY    FRANK    P.  .BLAIR,    JR., 


OF    MISSOURI. 


WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 

BUELL     &    BLANCHARD,    PRINTERS. 
1859. 


I  * 


""•  •'  M  85V 


ADDRESS  OF  MR  BLAIR 


Mr.  Blair  was  introduced  by  John  H.  Pillsbury,  Esq.,  President  of 
the  Association,  and  said : 

Mr.  President  and  Ladies  and  Gentlemen  : 

The  presumption  of  appearing  in  this  place,  so  exalted,  argues  a 
temerity  of  which  I  beg  you  to  believe  me  incapable,  of  my  own  mere 
motion.  I  have  been  pressed  into  this  adventure  by  good  friends,  who 
would  not  have  me  forfeit,  by  failure,  here,  the  little  reputation  that  I 
have  at  home.  They  must,  then,  rely  upon  the  generous  sympathies 
of  this  refined  audience  to  disarm  criticism  in  favor  of  one  who  hazards 
himself  at  their  bidding,  to  gratify  you  with  the  novelty  of  a  backwoods 
man  in  the  literary  character  of  a  lecturer  for  Boston.  I  deprecate,  in 
advance,  all  judgment  of  my  eifort  by  the  standard  you  are  accustomed 
to  apply.  Born  and  bred  among  the  hunters  of  Kentucky,  attaining 
manhood  in  Missouri  while  still  the  Far  West,  and  finishing  my  educa 
tion  as  a  companion  of  the  Rangers  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  I  should 
deserve  derision  if  I  came  here  to  make  a  display  of  scholarship  or  elo 
quence,  here,  where  a  long  line  of  illustrious  orators,  filling  the  first  half 
of  this  century  with  an  eloquent  renown,  vieing  with  that  conferred  by 
the  great  masters  of  the  art  of  oratory  upon  Athens  and  Rome,  is  suc 
ceeded  by  another,  which  now  promises  to  keep  the  crown  for  the  Bay 
State,  and  its  academic  city,  for  centuries  to  come.  The  inspiration 
which  thus  triumphs  through  successive  generations  had  its  origin  in 
that  blood  from  which  has  arisen  the  lofty  monument  that  looks  down 
upon  your  city,  its  surrounding  hills  and  villas,  and  the  rolling  ocean. 
That  inspiration  has  lifted  up  a  loftier  and  more  enduring  monument 
in  the  divine  power  of  epic  speech,  which  has  given  your  city  an  eleva 
tion  and  illumination  which  attracts  the  eye  of  all  our  land,  and  sheds 
its  rays  beyond  the  Atlantic.  Here  the  throes  of  the  Revolution  gave 
birth  to  the  infant  Hercules,  that  in  this  cradle  crushed  the  Hydras  of 
a  vast  military  power,  and  by  this  first  labor  quickened  the  heroic  spirit 
now  throbbing  in  the  bosoms  of  the  oppressed  throughout  the  world. 
Here  is  the  forum  where  Freedom  nerved  eloquence  to  exhort  to  its 
achievement  and  secure  its  conquests  forever  on  this  continent.  I  do 


not  assert  pretensions  to  the  least  of  the  attributes  that  have  worked 
these  miracles,  much  less  to  emulate  the  glory  of  the  gifted  men  who 
have  employed  them  all  in  the  service  of  the  country.  I  come  to  invoke 
those  who  now  flourish,  to  bring  the  commanding  influence  they  inherit 
to  assist  in  this  conjuncture  of  the  Republic  which  is  to  shape  the  des 
tiny  of  the  races  of  this  continent,  and  sway  it,  to  give  a  new  impulse 
to  the  vital  principle,  Liberty,  which  its  enemies  would  crush  under 
the  shields  made  to  protect  it. 

I  desire  to  present  to  the  young  merchants  of  Boston,  upon  whose 
invitation  I  speak,  two  great  practical  questions,  largely  affecting  their 
own  profession,  and  worthy  of  their  serious  consideration.  One  is  the 
great  enterprise  which  is  to  pour  the  commerce  of  India  and  the  East 
through  the  heart  of  our  country  by  means  of  a  great  national  highway 
between  the  oceans,  spreading  the  people  of  our  own  race  across  the 
great  temperate  zone.  The  other,  to  create  a  new  empire  for  their  com 
merce  within  the  tropics  of  America,  requiring  for  its  maintenance 
the  peculiar  organization  of  the  colored  races ;  and  both  enterprises  con 
curring  with  an  irresistible  power,  by  severing  their  unnatural  connec 
tion,  to  exalt  the  destiny  of  all  the  races  of  this  continent.  That  the 
races  are  discriminated  by  indelible  marks  of  difference,  appears  to  sug 
gest  to  some  persons  only  the  idea  of  superior  and  inferior  races,  and 
that  the  one  was  made  to  be  enslaved  by  the  other.  It  does  not  appear 
to  me  to  follow,  even  if  the  superiority  of  one  race  is  established,  that 
therefore  the  inferior  races  are  made  for  its  service.  On  the  contrary, 
it  is  to  me  a  conclusive  argument  against  blending  them  in  the  same 
community,  to  deteriorate  the  superior  by  admixture  or  contact  with  the 
inferior  races,  and  to  create  caste,  which  experience  shows  is  disastrous 
to  all  alike.  But,  with  the  history  of  the  whole  world  before  us,  it  is 
strange  that  any  one  should  not  see  that  the  marked  distinctions  be 
tween  the  races  indicate  this  adaptability  to  the  various  climates  of  our 
earth,  as  plainly  and  conclusively  as  the  vegetable  life  of  each  zone 
proclaims  the  climate  which  produced  it.  That  when  we  see  the  white 
race  wither  under  the  tropics,  or  change  the  pale  face  for  the  darker 
hues  which  distinguish  the  children  of  the  sun,  any  one  should  close 
his  eyes  to  the  lesson  it  teaches,  that  the  races  are  made  for  or  made 
by  the  climate  in  which  they  dwell,  and,  like  the  flora  and  fauna  of  a 
land,  will  flourish  only  in  a  congenial  clime. 

Upon  this  continent  there  are  regions  suited  to  each  of  the  races  that 
inhabit  it — transport  them  to  others  unsuited,  and  they  deteriorate. 
The  proud  Spaniard,  whose  courage  and  vigor  gave  him  the  wealth  of 
the  American  tropics,  has  already  become  effete  ;  and  the  negro,  brought 
thither  in  chains  to  minister  to  his  pleasure,  is  now  fast  rising  to  be 
come  the  ruling  race  in  those  regions,  gaining  rapidly  in  number,  and 
threatening  to  overwhelm  all  others.  It  is  time  that  this  great  nation 
should  accept  a  truth,  which  the  Almighty  has  so  plainly  written  on  all 
his  works,  and  adopt  a  policy  in  harmony  with  His  will,  which  neither 
nations  nor  individuals  can  violate  with  impunitj7.  What  the  policy  of 
the  Government  has  been  touching  this  great  concern,  what  it  shall  be 
in  the  future  in  furtherance  of  the  inevitable  destiny  of  the  races  to  re 
sume  their  true  zones  on  this  continent,  it  is  my  design  to  consider. 


The  present  epoch  is  a  new  starting  point  in  our  Government.  The 
impulse  given  by  the  movers  of  the  Revolution  has  corne  to  a  pause,  and 
all  seems  tending  to  receive  a  new  direction.  "  Life,  liberty,  and  the 
pursuit  of  happiness,"  were  the  rights  which  it  was  the  design  of  those 
who  framed  our  institutions  gradually  to  establish  for  all  the  races  of 
our  continent.  Those  great  men  knew  that  the  current  of  public  senti 
ment  flowed  with  full  volume  in  that  channel  which  their  toil  and  their 
patriotism  had  worked  out,  not  only  for  the  freedom  of  those  whose  cour 
age  had  conquered  it,  but  for  those  even  beyond  the  ocean  who  sympa 
thized  with  the  effort.  But  their  first  thought  was  for  the  races  at  home. 
Emancipation  of  the  African  slaves,  that  had  been  thrust  upon  our 
shores  by  the  cupidity  of  our  British  oppressors  and  their  minions  here, 
was  speedily  accomplished  throughout  the  northern  part  of  the  Confed 
eracy,  under  the  impulse  which  first  prompted  our  fathers  to  assert  their 
own  freedom.  Abolition  of  the  slave  trade,  with  a  view  to  the  same 
'  result  ultimately  in  all  the  States,  was  the  unanimous  act  of  the  nation ; 
and  before  this  was  done,  to  preclude  an  inducement  for  its  continuance, 
the  ordinance  of  1787,  excluding  Slavery  from  all  its  Territories,  was 
voted  by  the  Confederation,  before  the  Constitution  existed  to  add  its 
sanction.  That  other  inferior  race  among  us,  the  Indian,  was  recog 
nised  as  having  rights  which  the  white  man  was  bound  to  respect ;  that 
personal  liberty,  of  which  their  kindred  tribes  of  the  south  had  been 
deprived  by  the  Spaniards,  was  recognised  as  a  birthright,  in  which 
they  were  to  be  protected,  as  well  as  that  quasi-ownership  in  the  lands 
they  occupied,  of  which  they  could  not  be  divested  without  a  compen 
sation  deemed  by  themselves  an  equivalent.  The  whole  scope  of  the 
policy  of  the  young  Republic  then  embraced  that  grand  leading  idea  on 
which  our  Declaration  of  Independence  based  our  individual  liberties, 
that  all  men  are  born  equal  in  respect  to  that  humanity  which  author 
izes  them  to  claim  justice  at  the  hands  of  every  superior  power,  as  the 
preservative  of  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  which  was 
inherent  in  their  nature.  The  Constitution,  it  is  true,  permitted  that 
portion  of  the  African  race  which  had  been  brought  under  our  system 
of  colonial  bondage  to  be  retained  "  as  persons  held  to  service ; "  but 
in  this  very  phrase  it  rejected  the  adoption  of  the  law  creating  Slavery, 
and  only  recognised  existing  circumstances  growing  out  of  the  tyranny 
it  had  overthrown,  that  "persons  were  held  to  service"  whose  obliga 
tions  it  could  not  dissolve.  So  far  from  recognising  the  rightfulness  of 
Slavery,  the  opprobrium  of  the  term  was  rejected  to  exclude  the  infer 
ence  of  its  adoption  as  a  national  institution,  and  a  clause  was  inserted 
authorizing  Congress  to  pass'  that  act  abolishing  the  slave  trade,  and 
likening  the  seizure  of  a  man,  to  bring  him  to  the  level  of  a  brute  and 
appropriate  his  labor,  to  that  of  stripping  him  of  his  goods  at  sea  arid 
throwing  him  to  the  sharks.  The  crime  was  stigmatized  as  piracy.  No 
slave  in  Africa,  or  in  any  other  part  of  the  world,  can  lawfully  be  made 
a  slave  in  America.  This  proves  that  neither  the  great  charter  of  our 
Independence  nor  that  of  our  Union  ever  contemplated  Slavery  as  a 
national  institution,  or  even  one  to  be  long  perpetuated  as  local,  to  make 
slaves  of  the  home-born  race,  when  prohibited  as  to  the  foreign-born. 
Such  was  the  policy  in  which  our  Republic  was  inaugurated,  and 


6 

which  it  pursued  as  long  as  it  retained  the  impulse  given  by  its  founders. 
Its  whole  spirit  has  since  been  reversed,  and  its  very  life  corroded  by 
the  canker  of  Slavery  entailed  upon  us.  I  shall  not  trace  the  slow  pro 
gress  of  this  insidious  disease.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  that  the  Supreme 
Court — ever  prone  to  assert  the  power  of  the  few  in  its  own  power,  and 
assimilate  the  Government  to  its  own  anti-republican  organization — has 
overthrown  the  fundamental  principles  of  all  our  law,  and  of  our  religion 
itself,  which  recognises  every  being  with  a  soul,  as  a  man,  and  as  hav 
ing  some  rights  that  all  men  are  bound  to  respect.  In  this  decree  the 
well-established  precedents  of  every  department  of  our  Government  are 
annulled,  and  the  public  opinion  of  the  great  body  of  this  nation,  and 
the  construction  given  of  the  Constitution  by  the  uninterrupted  usage 
under  it,  are  violated,  and  the  sense  and  conscience  of  every  civilized 
people  on  the  earth  set  at  naught  and  defied.  The  sublime  thought 
that  has  filled  the  bosoms  of  American  patriots,  philosophers,  and  poets, 
and  which  the  millions  have  ever  uttered  with  rapture,  "  This,  this  is  the  • 
land  of  the  free,"  the  Supreme  Judicature  just  now  proclaims  must  be 
surrendered  to  the  doctrine  which  makes  Slavery  national,  and,  in  spite 
of  the  will  of  the  people,  opens  up  all  our  territories  to  become  the  home 
of  the  slave !  It  is  this  decree,  reversing  the  principles  of  our  revolu 
tion  and  the  policy  of  our  Government  from  its  foundation,  supported 
by  the  Executive  power  and  and  a  sectional  oligarchy,  which  has  at  last 
reached,  through  many  minor  controversies,  the  grand  issue  on  which 
the  destiny  of  the  races  of  this  continent  depends.  To  meet  it  in  such 
way  as  to  avert  the  portended  mischiefs,  is  now  the  greatest  concern  of 
this  country.  It  is  every  man's  concern,  and  this  must  be  my  apology 
for  offering  any  suggestions  about  it. 

In  common  affairs,  men  understood  Lord  Bacon's  philosophy  long 
before  he  applied  it  to  the  advancement  of  the  sciences.  The  prudent 
and  sagacious  constantly  look  on  the  past  portion  of  life,  to  learn  from 
its  experiments  what  to  pursue  and  what  to  avoid.  So  statesmen,  who 
have  the  welfare  of  races  committed  to  their  care,  should  look  to  their  his 
tory  to  guide  in  the  adoption  of  systems  to  promote  their  prosperity. 
The  founders  of  our  Government  were  wise  and  good  men,  and  called  to 
their  aid  in  forming  our  institutions  the  experience  of  all  enlightened  na 
tions,  especially  that  of  the  mother  country  and  that  of  their  own  as  colo 
nies.  Without  exception,  the  whole  body  of  sages  and  patriots  embraced 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  as  lying  at  the  base  of  our  whole  polity, 
and  held  that  the  liberties  of  mankind  were  the  surest  sources  of  the 
wealth,  power,  and  happiness,  of  a  community.  Slavery — universally 
pronounced  the  curse  of  the  country,  the  blot  on  its  fair  fame — was  only 
tolerated  for  the  time,  because  time  was  necessary  to  effect  a  cure  of 
what  was  a  chronic  disease,  which  hasty  and  violent  remedies  would 
aggravate,  and  might  make  mortal.  It  was  soon,  however,  reduced 
from  its  extended  boundaries,  and  all  the  country  that  then  belonged 
to  the  Union,  and  which  its  power  could  reach,  was  dedicated  to  Free 
dom,  in  the  confident  hope  that  its  growth  under  this  invigorating  power 
would,  in  the  course  of  years,  produce  a  teeming  population — the  off 
spring  of  free  labor — that  would,  by  the  overflow  of  its  numbers, 
made  prosperous  by  industry  and  economy,  by  degrees  remove  the  Af- 


rican-American  race  to  a  more  congenial  and  free  home  within  the 
tropics.  This  expectation  would  have  been  realized  to  some  extent  by 
this  time,  had  not  a  vast  acquisition  of  territory,  already  stocked  with 
slaves,  been  added  to  the  Union.  This  opened  up  a  way  for  the  dis 
persion  of  the  multiplying  millions  in  the  South,  and  prevented  the  mis 
chief  from  being  felt,  of  retaining  such  an  overshadowing  crowd  of  slaves, 
to  drive  out  or  starve  out  all  the  rest  of  the  white  race,  if  even  the 
masters  were  able  to  hold  their  places  and  the  negroes  in  subjection. 

But  the  policy  which  has  built  the  tier  of  free  States  from  the  At 
lantic  to  the  Mississippi  will  still  accomplish  its  grand  design,  if  the 
patriotism  and  courage  which  began  this  movement  remain  among  us 
to  urge  it.  If  all  the  territory  of  this  continent  now  free  is  maintained 
in  its  freedom,  the  Slave  Power,  which  received  its  new  impulse  from 
the  political  ambition  awakened  by  extended  domain,  must  rapidly 
shrink  under  the  pressure  of  the  robust  strength  of  free  labor,  now 
strong  within  the  slave  States,  as  a  domestic  element  of  opposition  to 
the  competition  of  slaves,  and  becoming  irresistible  as  a  political  in 
fluence  beyond  their  limits,  to  crush  those  aspirations  of  ambitious  men, 
who  found  their  schemes  of  subjecting  our  popular  institutions  upon  the 
prevalence  of  the  institution  of  Slavery.  I  propose  therefore  to  the 
friends  of  the  great  cause  of  popular  rights  and  free  labor  on  this  con 
tinent,  to  resume  the  conquering  march  in  its  behalf,  first  indicated  by 
Jefferson,  defined  and  established  by  the  ordinance  of  178T,  by  all  the 
States  in  the  Congress  of  the  Confederation,  and  finally  sanctioned  in 
the  Constitution.  That  line  of  march  terminated  on  the  eastern  bank 
of  the  Mississippi  river,  because  there  terminated  the  territory  belong 
ing  to  the  Union.  The  voice  of  the  majority  in  Congress  and  the  nation, 
on  the  acquisition  of  that  region  which  opened  the  way  to  the  Pacific, 
was  in  favor  of  its  resumption.  The  effort  was  defeated  by  the  inter 
position  of  10,000  slaves  in  Missouri,  and  the  threat  to  dissolve  the 
L7nion,  unless  permitted  to  constitute  it  a  slave  State.  This  was  the 
first  attempt  to  defeat  the  designs  of  the  fathers  of  the  Republic,  in 
dedicating  its  domain,  unpolluted  by  Slavery,  to  the  white  race,  and 
opening  the  career  to  Freedom  over  the  great  West  beyond  the  Missis 
sippi.  The  desperate  struggle  for  Kansas  has  resulted  more  happily. 
There,  intrigue,  menace,  violence,  and  bloodshed,  were  all  tried  in  vain 
against  the  constancy  of  a  brave  and  patient  people,  upholding  a  good 
cause.  This  triumph  over  all  the  bad  acts  of  bad  men,  abusing  govern 
ment  to  their  sinister  aims,  will  restore  Missouri,  even  its  enemies  ad 
mit,  as  a  link  in  the  chain  of  free  States,  to  girdle  the  middle  of  the 
continent  from  ocean  to  ocean.  It  is  this  grand  consummation  which  is 
to  remove,  in  removing  the  cause,  all  the  harassing  controversies 
threatening  disruption  between  the  States*  distinguished  now  by  white 
and  black  labor — the  one  elevating  the  industrious  producer,  the  other 
degrading  the  most  useful  employment  by  the  opprobrium  attached  to 
the  slave. 

Let  me  linger  here,  and  take  a  survey  of  that  glorious  line  of  progress 
marked  out  by  the  master  minds  of  our  early  statesmen,  and  argue  from 
the  past  what  are  to  be  the  results  of  that  system  through  which  they 
hoped  to  secure  a  happy  destiny  for  the  various  races  it  embraced  at  its 


8 

inauguration.  Of  all  the  regions  adapted  to  foster  the  energies,  intel 
lectual  and  physical,  of  a  heroic  race  of  freemen,  the  world  has  none 
equal  to  that  which  rises  from  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi  along  the 
temperate  central  latitudes  of  this  continent,  ascends  the  Rocky  Moun 
tains,  where  Pike's  Peak  commands  its  views,  and  stands  as  the  stand 
ard-bearer,  beckoning  the  nation — which  descends  again,  and  forms  the 
great  basin  of  the  continent,  the  western  rim — the  Sierra  Nevada — 
making  the  border  heights,  from  whicli  it  looks  down  on  California  and 
the  Pacific  ocean.  I  have  trod  much  of  this  vast  scene — its  great  plain 
on  the  east,  with  its  meandering  rivers,  spreading  out  lines  of  forest 
shades  amid  the  illimitable  prospect — its  mountain  grandeur  on  the 
slopes  clothed  in  luxuriant  grass  and  wild  vines,  the  elevations  with 
lofty  woods,  the  crests  combing  out  at  some  places  with  rich  minerals, 
at  others  crowned  with  turrets  of  rock,  the  highest,  with  imperishable 
snow — the  parks  and  valleys  between,  now  the  winter  homes  of  the  wild 
tribes  and  their  horses,  on  which  they  sweep  the  plains,  in  their  hunts 
and  wars,  at  no  distant  day  to  become  the  birth-place  of  a  nobler  and 
a  fairer  progeny  than  Circassia  can  boast,  or  the  Caucasus  from  which 
it  is  the  pride  of  our  race  to  have  descended. 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  blessings  which  Providence  has  prepared 
on  this  continent  for  civilization  seem  to  emerge  all  of  a  sudden  to  the 
view,  as  the  condition  of  society  has  reached  the  point  to  make  appro 
priation  possible.  The  gold  long  glistened  in  the  sand  and  quartz  of 
California,  under  the  eyes  of  the  eager,  gold-hunting  Spaniard,  unseen. 
It  was  reserved  to  feed  the  mighty  commerce  to  spring  up,  when  the 
energies  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  on  the  North  American  continent  had 
tamed  its  Atlantic  wildernesses  ;  when  its  inventive  genius  had  found 
the  means  to  leap  through  space  by  the  steamboat  on  the  sea,  and  the 
railroad  car  by  land ;  to  annihilate  it  as  an  obstruction  to  thought,  by 
conveying  it  on  the  lightning  over  continents  and  oceans.  The  same 
moment  seems  first  to  have  revealed  the  immeasurable  treasures  of  the 
great  plains  and  the  mountains  of  the  interior,  which  one  colossal  nation  is 
to  bestride,  with  one  foot  on  each  great  ocean,  sending  with  its  com 
merce  over  both  the  blessings  of  liber ty  and  civilization. 

It  is  said  that  when  the  Puritan  Pilgrims  first  reached  this  shore, 
they  sent  out  pioneers  to  ascertain  how  far  westward  the  land  was  sus 
ceptible  of  cultivation.  They  returned  with  the  good  tidings  that  the 
selvage  of  the  continent,  for  at  least  twenty  miles  back,  was  habitable 
by  an  agricultural  people.  This  was  the  utmost  aspiration  of  a  people 
who,  for  religion  and  liberty,  gave  what  to  them  was  the  world,  to  seat 
themselves  on  its  mere  margin.  Their  prows  now  plow  the  waves  of 
every  ocean,  and  their  children,  having  redeemed  California  from  the 
atrophy  of  Spanish  rule,  are  now  pressing  up  the  Sacramento,  to  meet 
in  the  great  basin  their  brethren  of  Kansas,  who,  ascending  with  their 
settlements  the  broad  streams  on  which  they  have  conquered  and  estab 
lished  free  homes,  are  already  gathering  gold  at  their  fountain  heads,  in 
Pike's  Peak  and  its  southern  ranges.  Here,  then,  we  see  rapidly  real- 
king  Benton's  prediction,  that  "  the  line  of  great  States  which  now 
c  stretch  half  way  across  our  continent  in  the  same  latitudes — Pennsyl- 
{  vania,  Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois,  and  Missouri — may  be  matched  by  an 


c  equal  number  of  States,  equally  great,  between  Missouri  and  Califor- 
'  ma."  Kansas  has  thrown  off  her  slave  fetters,  and  is  now  ready  to 
take  her  place  as  a  free  State  in  the  Union.  Benton's  second  State, 
West  Kansas,  or  the  State  of  San  Luis,  is  filling  up  with  people  around 
Pike's  Peak,  and  in  the  rich  valley  from  which  it  takes  its  name.  Fre 
mont,  Beale,  Heap,  Gilpin,  McClanahan,  and  Leroux,  all  familiar  with 
this  region,  speak  with  enthusiasm  of  the  fertility  of  its  soil  and  salubri 
ty  of  its  climate.  The  San  Luis  Valley,  drained  by  the  Rio  del  Norte, 
lies  between  the  38th  and  39th  parallels  of  latitude ;  it  is  at  once  the 
largest  and  most  beautiful  of  all  the  mountain  parks.  The  snowy  bat 
tlements  of  the  Sierra  San  Juan  form  its  western  wall,  and  it  is  here, 
according  to  Col.  Gilpin,  where  the  Sierra  Mimbres  rises  to  the  alti 
tude  of  perpetual  snow,  and  assumes  for  two  hundred  miles  the  local 
name  of  the  Sierra  San  Juan,  u  that  the  dislocation  of  nature  by  vol 
canic  forces,  and  the  consequent  metalliferous  developments,  attain  their 
highest  culmination."  And  let  me  say  here,  in  regard  to  this  gallant 
officer  and  hardy  pioneer,  that  the  language  I  have  quoted  from  one  of  his 
recent  speeches  is  no  prophecy  after  the  fact.  Years  ago,  before  the 
discovery  of  gold  in  California  or  at  Pike's  Peak,  in  his  tent,  and  with 
in  sight  of  the  great  Sierra  San  Juan,  he  uttered  the  same  prediction, 
since  verified  in  a  manner  so  extraordinary. 

The  third  State  marked  out  by  Benton  is  the  Mountain  State  :  "  A 
'  section  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  from  the  37 th  to  the  41st  parallel 
4  of  latitude,  nearly  three  hundred  miles  north  and  south,  and  going 
'  down  to  the  base  on  either  side,  making  two  hundred  miles  or  more 
1  in  breadth,  covering  an  area  of  60,000  square  miles,  while  all  the 
4  Swiss  Cantons  have  not  20,000."  This  Mountain  State  will  make 
one  of  an  unbroken  chain  of  States  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific. 
No  other  section  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  is  capable  of  an  extent  of 
cultivation  to  embody  a  community  to  constitute  a  State  ;  but  here  a 
Republic  will  grow  up,  thrice  as  potent  as  all  the  Swiss  Cantons.  Its 
three  immense  parks — the  South,  the  Middle,  and  the  North  Park — 
two  of  them  thirty  miles,  the  third  sixty  miles  in  diameter,  contain  an 
area  of  land  fit  for  cultivation  greater  than  all  Switzerland,  while  in 
numerable  valleys,  divided  by  rich,  sloping  hills,  covered  to  the  sum 
mit  with  pasturage,  open  the  way  from  the  parks  through  a  multitude 
of  streams — northward  by  the  Platte  to  the  Missouri,  eastward  by  the 
Arkansas  to  the  Mississippi,  southward  by  the  Rio  Grande  del  Norte 
to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  and  southwestwardly  by  the  Colorado  to  the 
Gulf  of  California.  Here  we  find  four  i,mmense  rivers  of  our  continent 
lifting  their  heads  aloft  together  in  the  midst  of  the  richest  mountain 
scene  in  the  world,  interlocking  with  their  arms  and  embracing  the  re 
gion  of  their  birth. 

This  healthy,  luxuriant  land,  thus  separated  into  coves  or  parks,  is 
distinguished,  as  Kentucky  was  when  first  appropriated  by  its  civilized 
settlers,  as  a  sort  of  preserve  for  the  game  that  fed  surrounding  nations. 
In  Fremont's  journal  of  his  exploration  in  1S43~'4,  it  is  thus  described. 
He  approached  by  the  head  stream  of  the  Platte.  "  The  valley  nar- 
6  rowed  (he  says)  as  we  ascended,  and  presently  degenerated  into  a  gorge, 
'  through  which  the  river  passed,  as  through  a  gate.  We  entered,  and 


10 

found  onrselves  in  the  new  park,  a  beautiful  circular  valley  of  thirty 
£  miles  diameter,  walled  in  all  around  with  snowy  mountains,  rich  with 
6  water  and  with  grass,  fringed  with  pine  on  the  mountain  sides  below  the 
c  snow  line,  and  a  Paradise  for  all  grazing  animals.  The  Indian  name  for 
'  it  signifies  '  Cow  Lodge,'  of  which  our  own  may  be  considered  a  trans- 
i  lation,  the  enclosure,  the  grass,  the  water,  and  the  herds  of  buffalo  roarn- 
4  ing  over  it,  naturally  presenting  the  idea  of  a  park."  The  resemblance 
recommended  to  Fremont  the  English  translation  of  the  Indian  name. 
The  Indians  had  never  seen  an  enclosed  park,  but  they  knew  that  it  was 
peculiarly  the  lodge  of  the  game,  because  the  Indian  tribes  dare  not 
lodge  there.  It  was,  like  Kentucky,  the  hunting  and  fighting  ground 
of  the  Indians,  but  the  home  of  none ;  when  they  came  to  hunt,  they 
came,  too,  with  all  their  strength,  to  fight.  Fremont  had  proof  of  this 
in  passing  from  the  New  Park  on  the  east  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  to 
the  Old  Park  to  the  west  of  the  chain.  The  journal  goes  on,  after 
passing  the  narrow  divide  between  the  parks  :  "  We  found  ourselves 
'  on  the  western  waters ;  we  halted  at  noon  on  the  edge  of  another 
c  mountain  valley  called  the  Old  Park,  in  which  is  formed  Grand  river, 
*  one  of  the  principal  branches  of  the  Colorado  of  California.  We  were 
f  now  moving  with  some  caution,  as,  from  the  trail,  we  found  the  Ara- 
1  pahoe  village  had  moved  this  way.  As  we  were  coming  out  of  their 
{  enemies'  country,  and  as  this  was  war  ground,  we  were  desirous  to 
4  avoid  them."  While  thus  guarding  himself  against  an  attack  from 
the  Arapahoes,  a  band  of  Utahs  was  discovered  coming  from  the  west 
of  the  mountains  to  hunt ;  and  in  the  collision  which  took  place  between 
these  two  hostile  villages,  he  was  enabled  to  draw  off  without  molesta 
tion  from  either.  His  notice  of  the  encounter  between  these  marching, 
war-making,  and  hunting  villages,  at  once  shows  their  estimate  of  the 
country  for  which  they  contended,  and  the  habits  which  will  determine 
their  destiny.  It  is  apparent  that  this  Mountain  State,  which  attracts 
the  warlike  tribes  from  the  great  valleys  beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains 
and  the  plains  on  this  side,  like  Kentucky,  which  brought  the  Indians 
from  beyond  the  Ohio  on  the  north  and  the  Cumberland  on  the 
south,  to  contend  for  the  prey  it  afforded,  is  to  be  the  grandest  of  all 
the  States  in  the  belt,  but  it  must  have  a  band  of  pioneers  that  can 
employ  the  axe  and  the  rifle  with  equal  success. 

A  fourth  State  will  embrace  the  whole  valley  of  the  Colorado,  down 
to  its  head  of  navigation  by  steam,  in  latitude  36°  6'.  Its  width,  from 
the  base  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  to  the  eastern  base  of  the  Wahsatch 
Range,  is  150  miles  ;  its  length,  upward  of  300.  The  Colorado,  which 
passes  for  several  degrees  of  latitude  below  the  head  of  navigation 
through  a  desert,  yet  opens  to  this  Valley  State  the  whole  northwestern 
seetion  of  Mexico,  with  the  Gulf  of  California.  A  central  railroad,  will 
strike,  in  the  midst  of  this  State,  the  old  Spanish  trail  from  New  Mex 
ico  to  Los  Angeles,  in  California,  which  bends  up  in  a  loop  to  38°  of 
latitude  in  the  Colorado  Valley,  and  descends  to  34° ,  to  avoid  the  im 
passable  desert  along  the  lower  latitudes.  A  short  branch  of  railroad 
from  the  central  will  unite  the  navigable  waters  of  the  Mississippi  with 
those  of  the  California  Gulf  by  1,000  miles  of  rail,  and  open  up  the 
western  flank  of  Mexico  to  the  control  of  our  interior  States.  This 


11 

Valley  State  has  already  the  nucleus  upon  which  to  build  its  strength 
in  the  settlements  at  Las  Vegas  de  Santa  Clara,  of  several  thousand 
white  men.  The  Sierra  de  la  Plata,  or  Silver  Mountains,  border  the 
valley  of  the  Great  Colorado  ;  the  Cerro  di  Sal  (Salt  Mountain)  is 
situated  among  the  western  spurs  of  the  Sierra  de  la  Plata ;  and  here, 
also,  are  found  mountains  of  iron,  rivalling  those  of  Missouri. 

The  Territory  of  Utah,  in  the  Great  Basin,  including  Carson's  Val 
ley,  makes  the  last  of  the  magnificent  belt  of  States  which  are  to  bring 
the  seaports  of  the  Atlantic  into  weekly  communication  with  the  com 
merce  of  the  Pacific  by  railroad,  and  hourly  intelligence  by  telegraph. 
In  this  Territory,  it  is  computed  there  exists  already  a  white  popula 
tion  of  60,000  souls.  There  are  a  multitude  of  thriving  towns,  extend 
ing  from  Parowan  and  Cedar  City  to  the  City  of  the  Salt  Lake.  ^  Ag 
riculture  flourishes,  coal  mines  are  opened,  iron  works  are  established, 
mechanic  arts  are  plied,  and  busy  trade  is  pushing  industry  ahead  to 
every  point  of  the  compass.  Before  five  years  shall  have  elapsed, 
Bentoii's  prediction,  received  a  few  years  ago  with  such  incredulity,  will 
be  accomplished.  Kansas  on  the  east,  Utah  on  the  west,  have  already 
sufficient  numbers  to  become  States.  The  next  season  will  not  come 
and  go  without  witnessing  a  larger  population  in  the  State  of  San  Luis, 
or  Colona,  as  some  prefer  to  call  it,  attracted  by  the  treasures  lately 
revealed  under  the  shadow  of  Pike's  Peak,  than  is  now  possessed  by 
Utah  and  Kansas  together.  The  Mountain  State  and  the  upper  valley 
of  the  great  Colorado  will  soon  be  filled  with  a  teeming  and  busy  peo 
ple  ;  their  attractions  surpass  all  the  others,  and  in  their  gorges  will  be 
sought  and  found  the  golden  quartz  whose  washings  have  impregnated 
the  sands  of  the  plains  below. 

This  belt  of  States,  now  in  rapid  growth,  will  have  decisive  influence 
on  the  destiny  of  our  grand  Republic,  and  all  the  dependencies  of  this 
continent.  When  their  political,  agricultural,  manufacturing,  and 
commercial  interests,  are  blended  by  the  all-pervading  power  of  elec 
tricity  and  steam,  a  bond  of  union  becomes  consolidated,  strong  in  pro- 
.portion  to  the  magnitude  of  the  system  within  the  reach  of  its  attrac 
tion.  All  Mexico  will  be  subject  absolutely  to  the  influence  it  may 
exert,  whether  for  its  prosperity  or  ruin.  That  base  line  which  can 
bring  the  whole  force  of  the  Union  to  bear  upon  its  most  exposed  part 
in  an  instant,  must  necessarily  control  its  destiny.  That  this  power 
will  be  exerted  for  its  protection,  and  to  promote  its  welfare,  will  be  the 
natural  result  of  the  closer  and  more  commanding  affinities  which  must 
grow  up  out  of  our  commercial  interests  in  that  country,  and  which, 
requiring  a  stable,  just,  and  free  Government,  to  create  the  prosperity 
necessary  to  advance  them,  will  concentrate  an  irresistible  power  on 
our  Government  to  secure  it. 

The  most  important  of  all  political  questions  with  the  friends  of  our 
Union  now  arises,  as  to  the  means  of  developing  this  cordon  of  central 
States  at  the  earliest  day.  Prudent  statesmen  of  this  time  avail  them 
selves  of  the  advantage  of  consulting  that  policy  which  those  who  built 
up  the  highest  prosperity  in  our  older  States  adopted  under  similar  cir 
cumstances,  and  always  incline  to  apply  it  to  the  new,  if  it  have  suc 
cessful  experiment  for  its  sanction.  A  line  of  free  States,  with  a 


12 

magnificent  national  road — like  the  great  Aorta  in  our  system,  scatter 
ing  the  currents  of  life  throughout  the  body — was  the  means  applied  by 
the  founders  of  the  grandeur  of  the  Republic  to  fill  up  the  uncultivated 
regions  between  the  seaboard  and  the  great  West  with  a  race  of  our 
own  blood.  I  propose  the  same  process  for  our  greater  West,  not 
merely  for  the  advantage  of  the  people  who  are  to  fill  the  new-born 
States  with  civilization  and  improvement,  and  all  the  blessings  that 
attend  Freedom  wherever  it  goes,  but  for  the  resulting  benefits  it  will 
confer  also  on  our  seaboard  States  on  both  the  great  oceans.  The 
discoveries  of  late  years  render  the  creation  of  means  to  transport  a 
population  across  the  continent  an  easy  effort,  compared  with  that  which 
paved  the  way  for  the  emigration  that  has  in  a  life-time  filled  up  the 
territory  between  the  Alleghany  and  Mississippi,  and  an  equal  dis 
tance  beyond.  The  new  power  that  is  said  to  have  bridged  the  Atlan 
tic  adds  half  a  million  annually  to  the  free  laborers  seeking  homes 
among  us  ;  and  the  teeming  West  now  adds  its  multitudes  to  those  of 
their  enterprising  kindred  from  the  older  States,  in  peopling  the  lands 
beyond  the  Mississippi.  Railroads  and  steamboats  bear  them  to  its 
confines.  The  dense  and  matted  forest,  so  formidable  to  the  settlers 
east  of  the  Mississippi,  do  not  retard  the  march  of  those  who  are  press 
ing  beyond  to  the  shores  of  the  Pacific,  but  a  land  inviting  the  plow, 
and  already  clothed  with  meadow,  as  if  the  Almighty  had  prepared  here 
a  new  land  of  promise,  to  repay  the  trials  of  those  who  had  passed  the 
wilderness — a  land  lifted  up  into  the  pure  air,  above  the  malaria,  from 
which  disease  is  banished,  and  whose  dry  atmosphere  ripens  the  already 
planted  meadow,  and  converts  the  grass  into  hay,  as  it  stands  upon  the 
ground,  to  fatten  and  sustain  countless  myriads  of  buffaloes  throughout 
the  winter,  instead  of  rotting,  like  the  rank  grass  in  the  humid  climates 
of  the  delta  of  the  Mississippi,  and  on  this  side,  and  infecting  the  air 
with  disease  and  death  ;  and  when  to  these  rare  recommendations  is 
added  that  temptation  which  none  can  resist,  that  shining  metal  which 
commands  the  world,  awaits  here  the  coming  of  our  race  to  found  an 
empire,  the  greatest  on  the  earth  and  amidst  its  grandest  scenes. 

This  column  of  new  States,  which  are  to  be  pushed  to  the  Pacific, 
may  with  truth  be  said  to  accomplish  what  Columbus  in  his  rapture 
supposed  he  had  attained  when  the  vast  Western  Continent  rose  upon 
his  vision.  He  looked  to  the  shore  as  that  of  the  "  far  Cathay;  "  he 
thought  he  had  reached  the  East  Indian  Empire  by  sailing  to  the  west. 
A  railroad  across  the  continent,  now  that  the  steamboat  plows  both 
oceans,  will  bring  China  nearer  to  Europe  than  America  was  in  the 
days  of  Columbus,  and  both  Europe  and  Asia  may  meet  in  their  pro 
ducts  in  the  heart  of  our  continent,  in  less  time  than  our  own  products 
could  formerly  be  conveyed  to  its  centre  from  its  two  sea-shores.  -It  is 
now  perceived  that  the  steam-car  is  superseding  water  carriage  to  a 
great  extent,  by  its  rapidity  und  security  in  conveying  traffic  as  well  as 
travellers.  How  much  of  the  Oriental  commerce  of  Europe,  that 
now  rolls  on  for  a  good  part  of  a  year,  circling  the  hemispheres,  will 
be  content  to  continue  this  lagging  delay,  rather  than  to  reach  fruition 
in  a  few  months  by  a  quick  transit  across  our  continent  1  The  nations, 
awakened  by  the  electric  spark  of  modern  discovery,  find  the  Old  World 


13 

delay  between  thought  and  consummation  too  slow,  and  now,  after  cen 
turies  of  consideration,  Europe  is  resolved  suddenly  to  make  a  short 
cut  to  India  by  the  Isthmus  of  Suez.  America  may  outstrip  Europe 
in  this  race  for  the  riches  of  the  Eastern  continent  and  the  islands  of 
the  Eastern  seas.  A  flight  to  and  across  the  Pacific,  on  the  wings  of 
steam,  will  attain  the  prize  soonest. 

The  suggestion  of  the  impossibility  of  this  achievement  is  worthy  of 
those  sages  who,  after  seeing  the  steamboat  stem  our  rapid  and  crooked 
rivers,  and  ply  along  the  ocean  around  its  shores,  where  it  is  most  dan 
gerous,  held  back  for  years  its  adventure  across  the  Atlantic  by  the 
din  of  impossibility  !  So  now  the  impossibility  of  making  a  railroad 
over  the  smooth  plains  and  long  sloping  mountains,  over  which  the 
wagons  of  the  emigrant,  loaded  with  women  and  children,  have  been 
moving  over  buffalo  roads,  for  which  nothing  has  been  done  by  science 
arid  art,  is  urged  to  bar  the  application  of  those  facilities  which  have 
climbed  the  steeps  of  the  Alleghanies  with  winding  grades,  and  bored 
through  their  inaccessible  heights  with  tunnels.  Col.  Fremont's  last 
scientific  survey  of  the  route  from  the  Missouri  to  the  Pacific,  in  which 
he  traversed  all  its  mountain  passes,  divided  into  sections,  giving  the 
grade  of  each  with  exact  measurement,  proves  conclusively  its  practi 
cability.  His  measurements,  taken  with  perfect  instruments,  in  the 
hands  of  an  expert,  disclose  to  us  that,  for  the  first  250  miles  on  the 
Kansas  river,  the  track  ascends  two  and  three-fourths  feet  to  the  mile. 
At  an  elevation  of  1,350  feet  above  the  sea,  the  route  left  the  Kansas 
to  cross  the  prairie  uplands  between  it  and  the  Arkansas.  It  reached 
the  Arkansas  at  the  distance  of  150  miles,  the  elevation  being  2,676 
feet  above  the  sea,  and  the  rise  being  nine  feet  to  the  mile  for  the  whole 
distance,  and,  in  crossing  the  uplands,  varying  from  twenty  to  forty  feet. 
Up  the  Kansas  to  the  mouth  of  the  Huerfano,  the  distance  is  230  miles — 
the  ascent,  seven  feet  to  the  mile  for  the  first  140  miles,  and  thence, 
to  the  mouth  of  the  Huerfano,  ten  feet  to  the  mile.  This  point  is 
4,375  feet  above  the  sea.  At  the  head  of  the  Huerfano,  in  the  Wet 
Mountains,  it  is  9,000.  From  the  mouth  of  the  river  to  one  of  its 
springs  at  the  foot  of  Utah  Pass,  in  the  Wet  Mountains,  the  distance  is 
124  miles,  the  average  grade  being  thirty-six  feet  to  the  mile.  From 
the  Utah  Pass  to  that  of  the  Cochetope  is  little  over  100  miles.  Fol 
lowing  the  mountain  foot  around  to  the  head  of  the  San  Luis  Valley,  at 
an  elevation  of  7,600  feet,  makes  the  approach  to  the  Cochetope  Pass, 
in  the  main  Rocky  Mountain  range,  through  the  Sahwatch  River  Val 
ley.  From  the  San  Luis  Valley  to  the  Cochetope  Pass,  at  an  elevation 
of  9,820  feet,  the  distance  is  40  miles,  and  the  average  grade  fifty-five 
feet.  At  the  Utah  Pass,  a  tunnel  of  1,000  yards  through  the  crest  of 
the  ridge  is  required  ;  and  at  the  Cochetope  Pass,  when  the  crest  is 
attained  by  a  grade  of  fifty-five  feet  to  the  mile,  a  tunnel  of  2,000  yards 
will  be  required,  which  would  carry  the  line  to  a  corresponding  eleva 
tion  on  the  western  side  of  the  mountain,  350  feet  below  the  summit. 

Here  is  the  development  of  all  the  difficulties  which  a  railroad  would 
have  to  surmount  in  the  passage  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  the  whole 
way  between  the  38th  and  39th  parallels  of  latitude,  wooded  and 
watered  with  the  exception  of  the  short  prairie  line  between  the  Kansas 


14 

and  Arkansas  rivers,  and  from  end  to  end,  the  soil  rich  in  grasses  and 
capable  of  settlement.  Fremont  has  taken  pains,  not  only  to  measure 
the  route  and  present  every  difficulty,  but,  in  his  forthcoming  publica 
tion,  he  will  exhibit  to  the  eye  of  the  reader  every  feature  of  the  defiles 
taken  by  daguerreotype,  so  that  an  engineer  in  his  closet  may  see  the 
impediments  in  the  same  daylight  in  which  Fremont  saw  them.  He  will 
give  his  measurements  and  the  whole  aspect  of  the  mountain  country, 
to  test  the  verity  of  the  statement  of  his  letter  to  me,  and  which  I  read 
in  the  House  of  Representatives,  with  his  pledge  to  make  it  good,  that 
"  the  line  is  direct,  and  the  inclination  easy ;  the  heavier  grades 
1  together  and  continuous,  none  heavy  enough  to  make  the  snow  an 
£  impediment  upon  the  rails  ;  that  there  are  but  two  great  obstructions, 
c  easily  overcome  by  moderate  tunnelling,  and  lesser  grades  than  are 
f  now  in  use  in  England,  over  which  is  passing  the  largest  traffic  in  the 
*  world."  Compare  this  with  the  grades  over  the  Alleghany  Moun 
tains,  penetrated  and  passed  over  by  so  many  railroads  bearing  im 
mense  trains  of  burden  as  well  as  passenger  cars.  The  railroad  from 
Philadelphia  to  Pittsburgh  passes  with  a  grade  of  ninety-one  feet  to  the 
mile  for  eleven  miles,  and  with  800  feet  of  tunnel.  The  Baltimore  and 
Ohio  railroad  ascends  the  Alleghany  from  Piedmont  to  Altamont  on  a 
grade  of  more  than  one  hundred  feet  to  the  mile  for  17  miles,  and 
through  several  tunnels  at  other  places  in  the  mountains,  making  a  dis 
tance  underground  of  more  than  a  mile  ;  and  on  the  railroad  from  Bos 
ton  to  Troy,  to  get  rid  of  a  circuit  and  heavy  grade,  the  Hoosac  tun 
nel,  four  and  a  half  miles  in  length,  is  in  progress. 

The  Sierra  Nevada,  which  is  the  only  obstacle  beyond  the  Great 
Basin,  has  been  found  practicable.  Mr.  J.  Lewis,  an  engineer  of  great 
eminence,  who  surveyed  the  route  for  a  road  from  Charleston  to  Cin 
cinnati,  and  recently  from  San  Francisco  to  San  Jose,  gives  information 
that  Sherman  Day  has  made  the  location  of  a  wagon  road  from  the 
vicinity  of  Placerville  to  Gary's  Mill,  in  Carson  Valley,  crossing  the 
Sierra  at  Johnson's  Pass.  No  part  of  this  road  has  an  ascent  over  five 
degrees.  The  engineer  traces  it  at  every  step  up  the  South  Fork  of  the 
American  river  to  Slippery  Ford,  which  is  only  four  miles  from  Lake 
Valley ;  and  a  tunnel  of  four  miles  from  this  point,  he  positively  as 
serts,  is  the  only  serious  difficulty  in  the  construction  of  the  railroad. 
He  states  that  two  hundred  feet  rise  in  the  length  of  the  tunnel  of  four 
miles  (fifty  feet  to  the  mile)  attains  the  Lake  Valley,  and  that  the 
descent  from  the  Lake  Valley  is  so  entirely  within  the  limits  of  railroad 
gradients  that  he  entertains  no  doubt  of  a  practicable  route. 

Here  we  see,  from  the  reports  of  practical  railroad  engineers,  and 
actual  travel  over  the  routes,  that  the  Great  Basin  is  accessible  from 
the  east  through  the  Cochetope  Pass  in  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and 
from  the  west  through  the  Sierra  Nevada,  by  way  of  Sherman  Day's 
Pass  at  Lake  Valley,  and  that  both  of  these  passes  lie  between  the  38th 
and  39th  parallels  of  latitude,  and  thus  a  direct  route  through  the  centre 
of  the  domain  of  the  Republic  is  presented. 

Successful  art  always  pursues  nature  in  the  attempt  to  accomplish 
similar  designs.  When  we  look  on  the  map,  and  see  the  central  river 
of  the  continent  running  from  north  to  south  in  the  midst  of  its  great 


15 

valley,  and  its  thousand  tributaries  spreading  out  east  and  west ;  and 
when  we  see  art,  with  innumerable  contrivances,  distributing  the  pro 
ducts  of  the  soil  to  and  from  the  central  channel,  the  reasoning  mind 
infers  that  a  wise  Providence  so  arranged  the  grand  instrumentalities 
of  nature,  that  the  sagacity  and  industry  of  man  might  apply  them  ben 
eficially,  as  we  see  them  employed.  If,  then,  we  would  convert  other 
great  agencies  of  nature  to  the  similar  design  of  making  a  channel  of 
communication  from  ocean  to  ocean — a  steam  river  across  the  continent 
to  a  direct  and  close  connection  between  the  eastern  and  western  waters 
of  the  world,  with  a  view  to  make  lateral  distribution  of  the  commerce 
of  life  through  the  body  of  our  country — if  we  would  follow  nature,  the 
main  channel  should  take  its  way  along  the  central  region,  and  throw 
out  its  branches  north  and  south.  The  structure  of  the  human  frame 
teaches  that  safety  and  utility  are  combined  in  giving  a  central  position 
to  the  main  vital  current  that  animates  the  system.  The  great  arteries 
do  not  lie  upon  the  surface,  nor  do  we 

"  Wear  our  hearts  upon  the  sleeve, 
For  daws  to  peck  at." 

While,  then,  it  may  be  well  to  have  channels  along  our  frontiers,  to 
have  commerce  with  other  nations,  certainly  for  national  convenience, 
but  indispensably  for  safety  from  external  aggression,  it  is  wise  to  have 
the  main  commanding  one,  where  all  our  energies  may  be  concentrated 
within,  so  as  to  be  exerted  most  readily  by  the  national  will. 

The  effect  of  such  a  thoroughfare  in  filling  the  interior  with  populous 
States  is  obvious  to  every  man  of  reflection.  Pigeons,  that  gather  in 
such  clouds,  and  spread  on  rapid  wing  over  a  country  fruitful  in  mast, 
have  not  an  instinct  surer  or  stronger  than  that  of  men  for  regions  that  will 
feed  all  their  appetites  and  the  longings  of  their  hearts.  Allured  by  the 
gold  that  runs  in  veins  through  all  the  mountain  ranges,  by  the  riches  that 
rise  up  spontaneously  with  the  grasses  that  even  now  cover  the  uncul 
tivated  plains  with  animal  life — the  means  of  easy  access  being  supplied, 
they  will  flock  to  farm,  to  mine,  to  hunt,  and  revel  in  adventure.  The 
attractions  of  a  farmer's  life  in  regions  where  the  land  lies  open  to  the 
plow ;  where  the  air  is  so  wholesome  that  game  hung  up  in  the  heat  of 
summer  is  embalmed  and  dried ;  where  the  lungs  heal  in  consumptive 
patients,  who  now  seek  the  pure,  dry,  and  thin  air  of  these  elevated  re 
gions  for  a  cure,  instead  of  the  damp  rotting  vapors  of  the  tropics — 
would  bring  multitudes  to  cultivate  the  voids  which  have  hitherto  known 
nothing  but  barbarism.  Thousands  would  go  there  from  the  love  of 
romantic  adventure  and  enterprise,  and  all  that  the  energy  and  intelli 
gence  of  our  race  could  draw  from  the  treasures  of  those  primeval  re 
gions,  from  their  minerals,  animals,  woods,  waters,  and  various  soils, 
would  be  poured  down  toward  both  seaboards  to  swell  the  tide  of  com 
merce  ;  and  this,  so  far  from  depopulating  the  older  States  washed  by 
the  ocean,  would  impart  new  life  to  them.  The  wants  of  a  vast  inte 
rior,  made  up  of  races  accustomed  to  enjoy 'all  that  belongs  to  the  sea — 
its  luxuries  from  all  its  continental  shores  and  islands — its  commodities 
and  elegances  derived  from  all  the  arts  and  manufactures  which  have 
grown  to  perfection  in  the  older  States — would  create  a  demand  on  their 
industry  and  skill  which  would  attract  to  them,  from  all  parts  of  Eu- 


16 

rope,  the  labor  necessary  to  make  adequate  supply,  and  give  an  impulse 
to  native  genius  and  enterprise  never  felt  before.  What  a  spring  this 
would  impart  to  commerce,  to  ship-building,  to  coal-mining,  and  to  the 
iron  foundry,  which  creates  the  framework,  the  bone  and  sinew  of  every 
potent  structure  that  belongs  to  commerce,  manufactures,  the  mechanic 
arts,  and  agriculture. 

The  influence  of  this  grand  movement,  emerging  in  a  line  of  free 
States  with  almost  marvellous  birth,  between  Missouri  and  California, 
upon  the  destiny  of  the  races  upon  this  continent,  is  the  aspect  that  in 
vites  the  deepest  consideration.  The  immediate  result  will  be  to  repress 
far  to  the  north  and  south  the  wild  beasts,  and  the  wild  tribes  of  men 
who  pursue  them.  Settlements  of  husbandmen  will  soon  fill  up  the 
middle  region,  watered  by  the  Arkansas,  the  Kansas,  the  Platte,  and 
their  tributaries,  and  the  empty  spaces  now  marked  on  the  map  as  the 
hunting  grounds  of  the  Cheyennes,  Arapahoes,  Utalis,  and  Sioux,  and 
the  reservations  of  the  Delawares,  Shawnees,  and  Cherokees,  will  be 
come  the  abode  of  civilized  communities.  The  wild  Indians  will  pur 
sue  the  buffalo  into  the  sections,  north  and  south,  least  adapted  to  cul 
tivation,  and,  as  the  game  gradually  diminishes,  the  tribes  supported  by 
it  will  destroy  each  other  for  the  remnants.  This  has  been  the  fate  of 
all  the  hunting  tribes  of  this  continent,  as  agriculture  intruded  into  the 
domain  on  which  they  preyed.  There  is  some  reason  to  hope  that  the 
vast  extent  of  the  Western  plains  peculiarly  adapted  to  pastoral  life 
may  have  the  effect  to  convert  portions  of  the  savage  hunting  tribes  into 
useful  accessories  of  our  race,  as  the  occupants  of  the  soil,  each  sub 
serving  the  interest  of  the  other.  The  Indians  connected  with  Spanish 
settlements  south  of  our  territories  become  herdsmen,  and  obtain  thus 
a  more  comfortable  and  much  less  precarious  subsistence  from  the  do 
mesticated  flocks  arid  herds  they  protect,  than  formerly  from  those  they 
pursued  for  indiscriminate  destruction.  The  Northern  tribes  of  our 
country  are  so  addicted  to  wandering,  by  nature  so  incapable  of  steady 
habits  of  labor,  that  those  that  survive  the  destruction  of  the  game  must 
become  a  nomadic  people,  and  live  on  a  share  of  the  herds  they  tend  for 
the  settlers,  or  in  sections  remote  from  agricultural  improvement  be 
come,  like  the  nomadic  tribes  of  Asia,  masters  of  herds,  and  roam  from 
wilderness  to  wilderness  for  subsistence.  As  for  the  tribes  that  now 
have  homes  on  the  frontiers  of  the  Western  States,  the  late  sales  of 
their  reservations  in  Kansas,  with  their  consent,  and  on  account  of  the 
Indian  proprietors,  point  to  the  destiny  of  all  similarly  situated. 

The  Indian  cultivation  is  nothing,  except  in  the  tribes  where  the 
chiefs  and  a  few  head  men  have  appropriated  to  themselves  the  Govern 
ment  annuities  designed  for  their  people,  and,  purchasing  slaves  with  the 
wealth  thus  acquired,  have  made  them  work  portions  of  the  richest  soil, 
and  b}T  the  products  doled  out  to  the  poor  of  the  tribe  have  reduced  them 
all  to  vassalage.  The  attempt  of  Ridge,  Boudinot,  and  others  of  the 
Cherokees,  to  assert  the  rights  of  the  mass  of  the  people,  was  met  by 
assassination  on  the  part  of  those  who  had  monopolized  the  money  and 
power  of  the  nation.  The  suggestion  of  Mr.  Buchanan,  in  his  message 
to  Congress,  that  this  Indian  usurpation  should  be  adopted  as  a  State 
in  the  Union,  coincided  in  principle  with  his  recommendation  of  the 


17 

Lecompton  usurpation  for  adoption  as  a  State  Government  in  virtue  of 
the  Slavery  clause  in  the  Constitution  it  presented.  The  latter  had  a 
redeeming  proviso  connected  with  it,  to  which  the  Indian  State  pro 
posed  for  fellowship  with  the  other  States  cannot  pretend.  After 
seven  years  of  endurance,  the  people  of  Kansas  could  have  changed 
their  Constitution,  and  partially  enfranchised  the  State.  The  Indian 
State,  which  must  come  for  admission  if  the  President's  innovation 
succeed,  is  constituted  of  the  red  and  black  races  exclusively  ;  and 
the  political  power  is  vested  in  the  chiefs  of  the  former,  in  virtue  of  the 
influence  derived  from  their  ownership  of  the  latter ;  so  that  the  caste 
with  which  rests  the  authority  will,  for  its  own  sake,  perpetuate  Slavery. 
It  is  not  probable  that  the  white  race,  which  constitutes  the  sovereign 
ties  which  comprise  the  United  States,  will  bear  an  amalgamation  in 
Congress  by  the  admission  of  red  or  black  representatives,  (for  they  mix 
in  the  Indian  Government,)  any  more  than  they  would  admit  such  rep 
resentatives  in  the  State  Governments,  or  approve  such  motley  inter 
mixture  in  domestic  life.  The  novelty  of  introducing  Cherokees,  Sacs 
and  Foxes,  Pottawatomies,  and  Kickapoos,  into  our  Senate  and  House 
of  Representatives,  (and  of  the  other  tribes  ;  for  if  one  comes,  why  not 
alH)  can  have  been  proposed  by  the  President  only  as  a  "  sop  for  Cer 
berus,"  that  triple -headed  monster,  which  he  fancies  will  guard  the 
gates  of  the  Charleston  Convention  through  which  our  Pluto  must  go  to 
renew  his  reign.  No  one  more  misconceived  the  genius  and  temper  of 
the  people  to  whom  Mr.  Buchanan  tenders  this  oifering  than  he.  They 
are  proud  of  an  oligarchy  of  their  own  best  blood,  but  to  share  it  with 
an  Indian,  although  he  brought  the  honors  of  Slavery  in  his  train,  they 
would  spurn. 

Hybrid  races  carry  degradation  alike  into  government  as  into  commu 
nities.  Indeed,  they  cannot  perpetuate  themselves.  The  Moors  and 
Spaniards,  although  subsisting  together  in  the  same  peninsula  for  eight 
centuries,  and  intermingling  in  every  relation,  have  propagated  no  com 
mon  stock.  The  celebrated  African  explorer,  Dr.  Livingstone,  as  re 
markable  for  his  observation  as  for  his  truth  and  liberal  feeling,  states 
that  in  the  old  settlement  of  Angola,  where  the  Portuguese,  the  first  col 
onizers  of  Africa,  amalgamated  universally  with  the  natives,  the  hybrid 
race  does  not  survive  but  a  few  generations  in  its  own  line.  Such  fam 
ilies  run  out,  unless  they  lapse  into  the  African,  and  lose  their  caste 
entirely  by  the  infusion  of  negro  blood.  So  in  this  country,  the  French 
who  have  intermarried  freely  with  the  Indians  leave  a  posterity  called 
half-breeds,  because  they  do  not  survive  an  intermixture  of  their  caste 
beyond  two  or  three  generations.  Curious  observers  have  assured  me 
that  the  same  fact  is  true  of  the  mulatto  caste ;  where  the  line  is  con 
fined  to  this  color  for  a  few  generations,  it  fails.  The  attempt,  then,  to 
hybridize  our  Government — which,  I  trust,  is  to  survive  a  thousand  cen 
turies — must  prove  a  failure  in  the  end,  even  should  Mr.  Buchanan's 
scheme  of  amalgamation  have  a  beginning ;  but  that  it  will  not  have.  The 
semi-civilized  tribes  on  our  Western  frontier  will  sell  out  their  lands, 
and  subside  at  length  among  their  kindred  races  of  Mexico,  where  it  is 
to  be  hoped,  under  the  protection  and  countenance  of  our  Government, 
they  will  in  the  course  of  time  become  a  refined  and  polished  nation. 
2 


18 

and  revive  with  their  growing  prosperity  some  of  the  elegant  tastes  that 
distinguished  them  as  a  people  in  the  days  of  Montezuma,  superadded 
to  the  manly  energy  of  mind  and  body  which  Liberty  invariably  confers. 
This,  I  confidently  believe,  will  be  the  consequence  of  filling  up  the 
great  West  with  these  pale-faces  that  have  already  wrought  such  mir 
acles  since  their  appearance  at  Plymouth  and  Jamestown. 

But  they  have  another  most  noble  achievement  before  them — most 
noble — because  it  requires  that  lofty  magnanimity  which  can  triumph 
over  the  strongest,  high  aspiring,  and  boldest  impulses  of  a  gallant  na 
ture,  pressing  forward  in  a  wrong  direction,  and  daring  to  encountei 
obstacles  irremovable  because  planted  by  nature  in  the  heart — in  the 
heart  of  those  who  assail  as  well  as  those  who  defend.  Justice  and 
conscience  form  an  insuperable  bar  to  the  propagation  of  Slavery,  and 
the  wrong  inherent  in  the  institution  undermines  it.  If  the  deliverance 
is  timely,  and  the  work  of  the  superior  race,  it  shows  that  it  is  progres 
sive,  and  looking  to  higher  destinies  for  the  master  and  the  slave.  If 
delayed  until  engrafted  on  the  political  institutions  and  grounded  in 
the  habits  of  a  people,  it  fastens  a  decadence  upon  both,  and  the  rise 
of  the  inferior  classes,  in  combination,  brings  deliverance  and  ruin  to 
gether.  The  Roman  Republic  sunk  under  servile  and  civil  wars,  in 
which  the  slaves  and  gladiators  were  associated  with  the  legions.  The 
decline  and  fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  was  the  result  of  the  universal 
corruption  which  universal  Slavery  entailed.  In  modern  Europe,  the 
progress  of  the  superior  class  was  marked  by  the  extinction  of  villenage 
and  the  enfranchisement  of  the  serfs.  The  growth  of  civilization  in 
Russia,  and  the  marked  fact  that  her  millions  of  serfs  could  not  defend 
her  own  soil  from  a  few  thousand  embattled  Britons  and  Frenchmen, 
has  hastened  emancipation  across  the  north  of  all  Europe  and  Asia. 
The  words  of  the  Emperor  to  his  nobility  in  Moscow,  who  hesitated  in 
this  great  work,  are  full  of  profound  admonition.  I  utter  them  here, 
not  as  prophetic,  but  evincing  that  sound  sense  which  I  know  will  con 
trol  in  the  solution  of  Slavery  in  our  land  : 

"  Gentlemen,  I  am  always  happy  at  being  able  to  address  thanks  to 
£  the  nobility  ;  but  it  is  not  in  my  nature  to  speak  against  my  con- 
6  science.  I  always  speak  the  truth,  and,  to  my  great  regret,  I  this 
'  day  cannot  thank  you.  You  may  remember  two  years  ago,  in  this 
c  hall,  I  spoke  to  you  of  the  necessity  of  proceeding  sooner  or  later  to 
'  the  reform  of  those  laws  which  regulate  servitude — a  reform  that  must 
t  come  from  above,  that  it  may  not  come  from  below.  My  words  have 
1  been  ill-understood.  Since  then,  this  reform  has  been  the  object  of 
'  my  constant  solicitude  ;  and  having  invoked  the  Divine  blessing  on  my 
c  undertaking,  I  have  commenced  the  work.  *  *  *  I  have  fixed 
'  for  you  the  bases  of  the  reform,  and  I  shall  never  swerve  from  them. 
'  '  Reform  must  come  from  above,  that  it  may  not  come  from  below.'  ' 

A  more  potent  voice  than  even  that  of  the  Autocrat  has  proclaimed 
this  as  the  law  of  the  world  ;  and  Turkey,  all-conquering  once,  stands 
a  sad  spectacle,  exhibiting,  in  her  own  decay,  how  the  wrong  inflicted 
on  inferior  races  avenges  itself  by  the  vices  with  which  it  afflicts  the 
wrong-doer. 

Slavery  in  our  country  has  taken  its  worst  form,  and  will  be  followed 


19 

by  the  worst  results,  if  not  speedily  removed.  The  contrast  between 
the  races  destroys  the  sympathies  of  kindred  which  would  soften  servi 
tude.  It  has  obtained  the  highest  judicial  sanction  for  the  idea  that 
the  negro  is  a  being  so  alien  to  our  nature  as  to  have  no  rights  which 
we  are  bound  to  respect  as  appertaining  to  man  ;  that  he  is  not  inclu 
ded  as  such  in  the  great  declaration  of  the  rights  of  humanity  ;  and  the 
inference  is,  that  he  has  no  soul.  Our  Supreme  Court  has  decided  that 
the  negro  has  nothing  of  that  "Divinity  that  stirs  within  us,"  which 
can  save  him  here  or  hereafter.  This  monstrous  doctrine,  interpolated 
into  our  Constitution,  is  a  last  resort  to  render  Slavery  compatible  with 
the  principles  of  our  free  government.  This  shocking  decision  will 
awaken  a  feeling  in  every  heart  not  dead  to  all  the  sentiments  of  hu 
manity,  that  cannot  but  arouse  public  opinion  everywhere  to  revolt. 
To  what  grade  must  the  population  of  the  slaveholding  States  be  re 
duced,  if  that  class-  which  performs  the  labor  and  creates  the  wealth  of 
the  State  is  stripped  of  the  attributes  of  man,  and  ceases  to  have  any 
rights  7  Will  not  such  degradation  attach  in  time  to  all  who  are  con 
strained  to  labor  in  the  service  of  another,  no  matter  of  what  class,  or  how 
compelled  ?  If,  then,  a  state  of  things  is  produced  in  the  slaveholding 
States  which  subjects  the  white  laborer  to  the  same  absolute  depend 
ence  on  the  employer  as  the  black,  the  fate  of  one  becomes  the  fate  of 
the  other,  and  neither  will  have  rights  which  those  holding  all  power  in 
the  State  are  bound  to  respect.  A  leading  press  in  Virginia  has  al 
ready  announced  this  doctrine,  and  a  late  debate  in  the  Legislature  of 
Georgia  evinced  that  this  squinting  toward  despotism  was  understood 
to  be  the  aim  of  those  striving  to  reduce  all  who  labor  to  the  condition 
of  Slavery,  by  opening  the  slave  trade  to  fill  all  the  channels  of  industry 
with  such  as  would  work  for  slave  wages,  or,  in  other  words,  for  bare 
subsistence.  The  proposal  tending  to  open  the  slave  trade  by  legisla 
tive  action  was  defeated,  after  strenuous  debate,  by  the  argument  that 
the  slaves  now  increased  faster  than  the  whites  ;  and  that  if  an  addition 
al  influx  of  Africans,  by  opening  the  slave  trade,  were  permitted,  the 
wages  of  free  labor  would  be  so  reduced  as  to  destroy  its  existence. 
This  admitted  argument  admits,  also,  that  as  the  slaves  multiply  more 
rapidly  than  the  whites,  time  will  produce  the  same  result  without  im 
portation.  Already,  in  South  Carolina,  the  slaves  are  nearly  two  to 
one  of  the  whites ;  and  to  this  complexion  all  must  come  at  last,  in  those 
States  that  foster  the  slave  institution. 

It  is  evident,  from  the  showing  of  the  census,  that  free  and  slave 
labor  cannot  subsist  together  through  a  long  tract  of  time.  Virginia 
presents  the  most  favorable  aspect  for  the  continuation  of  both,  for  it 
is  a  State  that  exports  the  black  laborer,  and  has  a  climate  peculiarly 
inviting  to  the  immigration  of  free  labor ;  yet  the  whole  number  of 
free  whites  engaged  in  agriculture  in  1850  was  97,454,  while  her  slaves 
amounted  to  472,528 — near  half  a  million — now,  doubtless,  more. 
And  what  has  been  the  result  of  a  half  century's  experiment  of  black 
and  white  labor  together  upon  the  latter  and  upon  the  State's  prosperi 
ty'?  A  comparison  with  a  free-labor  State  will  show.  Virginia,  with 
the  advantages  of  soil,  climate,  extent,  and  more  than  double  the  pop 
ulation  of  New  York  in  1800,  has  now  fallen  far  behind  her  rival.  In 


20 

1850,  the  population  of  New  York  more  than  doubled  that  of  Virginia, 
and  the  census  of  her  real  and  personal  property  was  triple.  This  half 
century's  experiment,  then,  solves  the  problem  as  to  what  must  be  the 
result  of  free  and  slave  labor  on  the  destiny  of  States.  The  energetic 
white  generations  of  Virginia  abandon  the  State  to  escape  from  the 
blighting  presence  of  Slavery.  The  immigration  of  free  labor,  and  the 
capital  it  would  bring  with  it,  shuns  the  State,  from  the  same  impulse ; 
and  now,  unless  reaction  occurs  to  arrest  this  fatal  tendency,  is  not  the 
once  leading  State  of  the  Union  doomed  to  perpetual  inferiority  by  sub 
stituting  the  black  race  for  its  own  fair  and  noble  progeny  ?  Had  Vir 
ginia,  like  New  York,  gradually  abolished  Slavery,  and  thus  opened  its 
gates  to  free  immigration,  and  retained  her  own  children,  who  were 
driven  out  and  disfranchised  lest  their  votes  would  unsettle  the  divine 
institution  of  Slavery,  (as  it  is  now  called,)  who  can  doubt  but  that  its 
greater  white  basis  at  the  start  would  still  have  kept  ahead  of  that  of 
the  Northern  State  ?  If  this  be  so,  then  for  half  a  million  of  slaves 
Virginia  has  exchanged  more  than  two  millions  of  citizens  animated 
with  her  own  blood,  gallant  spirit,  and  lofty  intellect.  The  vaunted 
opinion  of  the  Supreme  Court,  which  converts  slaves  into  brutes,  makes 
no  amends  for  this  loss.  With  her  two  millions  of  free  men,  Virginia 
has  lost  $600,000,000  of  real  and  personal  property,  the  difference  be 
tween  the  assessed  value  of  hers  and  that  in  New  York ;  counted  as 
chattels,  and  not  men,  slaves  make  no  compensation  to  Virginia  for  the 
loss  of  her  free-born  children — the  priceless  jewels  of  a  great  Common 
wealth. 

Neither  the  heroic  nor  the  Christian  spirit,  native  to  the  Southern 
bosom,  can,  in  silent  thought,  brook  the  sad  sophistry  of  the  bench,  nor 
the  false  glosses  of  sectional  conventions,  disguising  the  fatal  influence 
of  black  bondage.  They  see  and  feel  the  ruin  around  them  in  the 
poverty  and  despair  of  their  unemployed  countrymen  and  in  the  wasted 
face  of  the  country.  They  know  that  mischief  must  fall  on  their  pos 
terity,  when  the  land  is  surcharged  with  hosts  of  slaves  wielding  the 
physical  energy  of  the  country,  and  an  oppressed  white  race,  which  may 
at  some  time  turn  the  hatred  now  nurtured  against  the  in&truments 
which  deprive  them  of  their  bread,  to  those  whose  opulence  and  power  i& 
founded  on  the  subjection  of  both  subordinate  classes.  The  growing 
evil  is  marked  by  the  far-seeing  forecaste  of  the  oligarchy,  not  only  on 
the  census  tables,  but  in  the  atmosphere  that  sighs  around  them.  But 
they  meet  it  in  the  spirit  of  daring  men — political  ambition  whispers 7 
and  as  from  the  beginning,  its  inaudible  breathing  swells  the  bosom  of 
the  proud  and  aspiring  with  the  thought — "Evil,  be  thou  my  good.'7 
This  malady  of  the  South  is  now  to  be  cured,  the  chevaliers  think,  by 
the  sword.  Its  first  movement  was  by  combination  and  diplomacy  to- 
make  Presidents,  prostitute  aspirants  at  the  North,  break  compacts,, 
seize  Kansas,  make  a  black  line  across  the  continent,  and  spread  the 
contagion  of  Slavery  over  all  the  south  of  the  continent  and  its  islands,, 
and  make  an  Occidental  Empire,  in  imitation  of  the  Oriental  Empires  of 
Timour  and  Mohammed.  Success  seemed  to  answer  to  the  first  well- 
directed  push,  but  Kansas  at  last  proved  a  stumbling-block,  and  now 
schemes  of  direct  and  immediate  aggression,  under  Executive  auspices. 


21 

with  arms,  are  meditated.  The  shades  of  Cortez  and  Pizarro  visit  in 
dreams  the  couches  of  numberless  military  chieftains  with  the  spoils  of 
Mexico,  South  America,  and  Cuba,  in  their  hands;  and  Satrapies,  with 
crowds  of  vassals  held  of  some  victorious  conqueror,  rise  in  visions  to 
put  our  plain  confederated  Republic  of  free  citizens  to  shame. 

But  this  age,  unhappily  for  all  military  meteor's,  is  utilitarian.  The 
sober  minds  of  our  countrymen  see  no  advantage  in  ravaging  Mexico  or 
Cuba;  nor  do  they  think  Slavery  such  a  blessing  that  they  should  incur 
the  disgrace  of  buccaneering  to  bring  a  free  people  under  the  yoke.  It 
is  against  the  genius  of  our  Republic,  born  of  Freedom  and  Toleration, 
to  provoke  by  flagrant  wrong,  and  especially  by  a  wrong  having  a  still 
greater  one  for  its  purpose,  the  establishment  of  Slavery  in  a  neighbor 
ing  Republic,  which  fought  bravely  and  successfully  to  abolish  it.  This 
scheme  for  alleviating  our  plague,  by  visiting  it  upon  another  people,  is 
not  just,  nor  will  it  succeed. 

There  is  another  remedy,  deriving  its  force  from  the  nature  of  our 
Constitution.  It  is,  indeed,  its  healing  principle,  curing  wounds  other 
wise  irremediable.  It  is  Freedom.  It  is  the  deliverance  of  two  incon 
gruous  races  from  an  unnatural  connection,  and  setting  both  free.  That 
sable  race,  bred  in  the  pestilence  of  Africa,  is  a  blot  on  the  fair  pros 
pect  of  our  country.  The  institution  which  grows  up  out  of  its  servi 
tude  is  a  poisonous  excrescence,  which  sucks  the  vitality  out  of  those  to 
whom  it  clings.  It  is  an  institution  which,  in  making  the  aliment  of 
the  whole  society  in  which  it  exists  depend  on  the  growth  of  Slavery, 
makes  this  at  last  the  lot  of  all  who  are  not  the  masters. 

Deliverance  therefore  from  a  people  who  cannot  assimilate  with  our 
people,  the  subjects  of  an  institution  utterly  abhorrent  to  our  free  in 
stitutions,  is  the  natural  and  easy  mode  of  restoring  symmetry  to  our 
political  systems,  and  equality  among  the  people  and  States  of  the 
Union. 

How  happily  might  the  genius  and  generous  enthusiasm  of  the  lead 
ing  spirits  of  the  South  accomplish  this  grand  result,  if  the  patriotism 
which  lies  at  the  bottom  of  their  hearts  could  hold  in  check  their  heady 
ambition  ?  Even  the  soaring  flight  which  would  carry  the  flag  of  this 
country  over  all  the  surrounding  islands  of  the  Gulf  and  nations  of  our 
continent,  might  prove  fortunate,  if  in  the  fullness  of  our  strength  we 
carried  along  with  it  the  wisdom,  justice,  freedom,  and  love  of  liberty, 
that  first  unfurled  it.  But  no  !  buccaneering  abroad — threats,  violence, 
and  sinister  intrigue,  at  home — are  the  auspices  under  which  these  vast 
designs  are  inaugurated. 

tl  0  for  a  Falconer's  voice 
To  lure  these  tassel  gentles  back  again, 
But  bondage  is  hoarse,  and  may  not  speak  aloud." 

If  there  is  no  commanding  voice  to  bring  these  high-flyers  back  again 
to  the  just,  wise,  and  peaceful  policy  that  once  characterized  our  Gov 
ernment,  if  the  two  races  of  the  impoverished  whites  and  enslaved 
blacks,  with  mutual  hate,  subject  each  other  to  a  common  oppression-, 
and  "  dare  not  speak  aloud,"  the  first  heavy  calamity  that  comes  from 
either  the  perverted  ambition  that  would  usurp  power  over  the  weaker 
nations  around  us,  or  the  weaker  class  among  us,  will  awaken  a  new 


22 

sense  of  patriotism.  The  counsels  of  Washington,  Jefferson,  Macon, 
and  Gaston,  of  Lowndes,  the  elder  Gadsden  of  the  Revolution,  Craw 
ford,  and  all  the  lights  of  the  South,  that  led  the  way  to  homogeneous 
institutions  to  make  our  Union  perpetual,  will  again  prevail,  and  Mr. 
Calhoun's  sectionalism  will  abate  its  presumption.  The  patriotism  of 
the  South  will  then  scan  the  cause  of  the  growth  of  the  North,  and  will 
gradually  open  the  way  to  that  prime  element  of  its  prosperity — Free 
Labor.  The  reform  will  be  gradual,  as  all  mighty  movements,  to  be 
safe,  must  be  slow.  Whenever  a  region  is  acquired  within  our  tropics 
to  make  a  permanent  home  for  our  American  freedmen,  emancipation 
will  take  place  rapidly  all  along  the  line  of  slave  States  bordering  on 
the  free.  Our  slaves  might  even  be  allowed  to  make  compositions  with 
their  masters,  and  work  out  their  own  freedom,  in  the  rich  countries  of 
the  tropics,  where  the  labor  of  a  man  adapted  to  the  climate  is  worth 
four  times  as  much  as  in  Virginia  or  Kentucky.  And,  whether  this  be 
done  or  not,  I  am  satisfied  that  if  such  a  refuge  is  provided  for  the 
blacks,  and  the  argument  that  emancipation  will  place  them  on  an 
equality,  within  the  States,  with  the  laboring  white  man,  is  thus  taken 
out  of  the  mouths  of  the  supporters  of  the  institution,  the  same  class  of 
men,  whose  prejudices,  aroused  by  the  fact  that  they  have  been  injured 
by  the  competition  of  slave  labor,  has  been  made  the  means  to  per 
petuate  the  slavery  of  the  instruments  of  their  ruin,  will  in  turn  de 
mand  that  the  slave  shall  be  removed — they  will  vote  his  emancipation 
when  they  know  that  emancipation  includes  removal  from  the  State. 

It  is  only  by  the  joint  action  of  the  State  and  National  Governments 
that  emancipation  can  be  effected.  President  Monroe,  an  eminently 
practical  statesman,  gave  this  as  his  opinion  in  the  Virginia  Convention 
in  1829,  and  when  it  was  suggested  that  the  National  Government 
could  not  interfere  in  this  delicate  matter,  he  declared  that  it  could  do 
so  in  aid  of  the  State  Governments,  and  that  emancipation  was  not 
practicable  without  such  aid.  "  And,"  he  says,  "  if  we  find  that  this 
;  evil  (Slavery)  has  preyed  upon  the  vitals  of  the  Union,  and  has  been 
'  prejudicial  t3  all  the  States  where  it  has  existed,  and  is  likewise  re- 
'  pugnant  to  their  several  State  Constitutions  and  Bills  of  Right,  why 
i  may  we  not  expect  that  they  will  unite  with  us  in  accomplishing  its 
4  removal?  "  The  Indians  have  been  removed  from  the  different  States 
at  the  expense  of  the  General  Government,  and  new  homes  provided  for 
them ;  and  as  there  are  free  negroes  in  every  one  of  the  States,  and  the 
subject  is  thus  brought  home  to  the  people  of  all,  what  is  to  prevent 
the  Federal  Government  from  offering  to  all  of  that  class,  who  are  wil 
ling  to  accept  it,  a  home  in  a  climate  congenial  to  their  natures,  and 
throwing  around  them  its  protection,  as  has  been  done  for  the  Indians  ? 
I  do  not  propose  that  any  man  should  be  constrained  to  go  there,  but 
that  we  should  offer  them  the  inducement  to  go,  precisely  as  we  do 
with  the  people  of  our  own  race,  when  we  acquire  for  them  regions  like 
California,  in  which  they  can  better  their  condition.  Without  further 
action  on  the  part  of  our  Government  than  to  secure  homesteads  to 
those  who  are  now  free,  or  may  hereafter  become  so,  either  by  the  act 
of  the  State  Government  or  individuals,  and  the  guaranty  of  their  civil 
and  political  rights,  (as  England  has  done  for  her  subjects  in  portions 


23 

of  Honduras,)  emigrants  in  thousands  would  soon  find  their  way  to 
freedom — to  the  rich  soil,  where  the  people  of  their  own  color  prevail, 
although  just  emerging  from  Slavery,  over  the  Spanish  and  aboriginal 
race,  making  the  main  strength  of  the  country,  and  holding  office  both 
in  church  and  state.  Can  any  doubt  that  the  American-born  and 
American-instructed  African,  carrying  with  him  the  intelligence,  the 
industry,  the  progressive  impulse,  acquired  by  all  engaged  in  the  agri 
culture  of  this  country,  would  fail  to  carry  success  with  them  to  their 
new  abodes  1  It  imparts  new  energy  to  a  plant,  to  transplant  it  in  a 
better  and  more  congenial  soil.  By  the  gradual  transfer  of  four  mil 
lions  of  our  freedmen  to  the  vacant  regions  of  Central  and  South  Amer 
ica  ;  invigorated  by  a  fresh  sense  of  liberty ;  with  lands  of  their  own  be 
fore  them  to  improve ;  with  immense  forests  of  mahogany  and  all  the 
precious  woods  of  the  tropics,  the  dye  stuffs,  the  medicinal  plants,  and 
varieties  of  fruits,  which  make  up  of  themselves  a  rich  commerce, 
growing  spontaneously,  and  to  be  had  simply  for  the  labor  of  prepara 
tion  ;  with  mines  of  silver  and  gold  shut  up  simply  because  of  the  ex 
haustion  of  the  race  that  opened  them — a  race  unsuited  to  the  climate 
in  which  they  are  found — who  can  doubt  that  the  transplantation  of  the 
negro  from  our  temperate  zone  to  that  hot  climate,  that  infuses  immense 
vigor  into  all  the  animal  life  as  well  as  vegetable  growth  that  is  native 
to  it,  would  not  only  create  wealth,  but  establish  a  great  national  power, 
for  the  benefit  of  that  under  the  patronage  and  protection  of  which  it 
arose  1 

All  the  Spanish  States  of  this  continent  have,  in  their  new  organiza 
tion,  made  our  Government  their  exemplar.  The  relics  of  despotism 
inherent  in  their  old  forms,  and  possibly  the  inveterate  habit  of  that 
people,  will  not  permit  them  to  settle,  and  the  machinery  to  move  easily 
and  in  order.  A  dependency  of  our  Government,  composed  of  a  people 
addicted  to  respect  it,  and  accustomed  to  its  forms,  aided  by  a  multi 
tude  of  our  own  race,  whose  enterprise  and  interest  would  induce  them 
to  embark  their  capital  and  skill  in  building  up  a  new  power  to  appro 
priate  the  riches  of  the  tropics,  would  form  a  Republic  to  give  law  to 
all  of  their  caste  within  the  reach  of  its  influence.  I  have  no  doubt 
that  all  the  nations  and  islands  of  the  Gulf  would  fall  under  the  in 
fluence  and  make  a  league  with  such  a  dependency  of  the  United  States 
as  I  have  contemplated,  and  that  the  whole  would  necessarily  look  to 
our  Union  for  protection.  The  contiguity  of  the  United  States*,  and  the 
relations  which  its  commerce  and  overshadowing  power  would  create, 
and  the  very  posture  of  the  country,  enveloped  in  the  waters  poured 
out  from  our  land  and  the  Gulf  stream  that  washes  our  shores,  must 
make  the  people  who  inhabit  it  with  us,  though  not  of  us.  It  would, 
in  fact,  become  our  India,  but  under  happier  auspices  ;  for,  instead  of 
being  governed  by  a  great  company,  to  drive  the  people  to  despair  and 
insurrection  by  its  exactions,  it  would  have  its  own  Government,  which 
would  owe  a  fealty  to  ours,  as  Canada  does  to  England,  which  is  gov 
erned  by  its  ^  own  representative  Assemblies  and  by  a  Governor  and 
Cabinet,  which,  however  appointed,  recognise  conformity  to  public 
opinion  declared  by  the  representative  body  to  be  a  duty.  The  Crown  is 
but  a  symbol  of  authority.  Its  power  and  that  of  the  British  Parlia- 


24 

ment  is  felt  only  in  aiding  the  improvement  of  the  country  and  protect 
ing  it.  The  tie  between  them  is  a  triple  cord  of  increased  power,  hap 
piness,  and  glory,  the  growth  of  their  union.  And  I  believe  such  will 
be  the  bond  to  bind  to  the  car  of  our  Union  as  dependencies  the  free 
Republics  of  African  Americans  now  in  embryo  in  our  tropics,  and 
the  Indian  Republics  of  Mexico,  in  which  the  red  race  now  constitutes 
seven-eighths  of  the  population. 

It  is  the  true  mission  of  a  superior  and  enlightened  race  to  protect 
and  establish  with  well-founded  institutions  the  feebler  races  within  the 
reach  of  its  influence.  The  general  welfare  requires  this,  and  renders 
it  the  exalted  duty  of  powerful  nations.  England,  France,  and  Rus 
sia,  though  subject  to  selfish  monarchies,  yet  feel  the  impulse  of  this 
enlightened  age;  and  we  see  the  Czar  giving  freedom  and  personal 
rights  to  his  sixty  millions  of  serfs,  and  spreading  civilization  over  all 
the  north  of  Europe  and  Asia.  England  and  France  hold  up  besotted 
Turkey,  and  endeavor  to  instil  life  again  by  imparting  freedom  and 
toleration  to  the  masses.  England  extends  her  principles  of  representa 
tive  government,  in  greater  or  less  degree,  to  her  dependencies ;  and 
France,  propagating  her  power  in  Africa  and  Asia,  carries  with  it  the 
refinement,  intelligence,  and  skill,  which  may  at  some  time  elevate  the 
people  she  civilizes  in  the  scale  of  nations.  Shall  the  mighty  State  of 
this  hemisphere — the  pioneer  of  the  liberal  principle  of  the  greatest 
good  to  the  greatest  number — be  known  to  the  red  and  black  races 
struggling  into  existence,  under  liberal  forms  of  government,  in  neigh 
boring  climes  suited  to  their  caste,  only  as  a  depredator  and  enslaver  1 
They  seem  to  have  been  committed  to  our  guardianship  by  the  gracious 
Providence  that  has  conferred  so  many  blessings  upon  us  in  the  achieve 
ment  of  our  own  liberties.  Shall  we  abnse  the  power  thus  conferred 
by  establishing  bondage  as  the  law  for  all  whom  we  can  master  1 

I  dare  not  speak  for  all  the  States,  but  for  that  in  which  I  live  I 
can  assert  that  there  is  a  strong  feeling  among  the  masses  to  absolve 
Missouri  from  the  shame  of  countenancing  the  slave  trade,  foreign  or 
domestic,  or  of  increasing  the  burden  upon  the  Union  by  emptying  the 
Treasury  and  creating  a  national  debt  to  buy  islands  of  slaves,  en  masse, 
for  others'  uses,  or  even  of  continuing  the  abuse  within  its  own  limits, 
to  foster  the  pride  of  a  few  at  the  expense  of  the  interests  of  the  many. 
But  there  are  difficulties  in  accomplishing  this  last  point,  that  the  peo 
ple  of  the  free  States  do  not  seem  to  estimate ;  and  yet,  when  nearly 
one-half  of  these  States  have  laws  on  their  statute  books  prohibiting  the 
immigration  of  free  negroes  into  them,  they  should  understand  why  it 
is  that  almost  every  man  repels  any  scheme  of  emancipation  which 
would  let  loose  a  hundred  thousand  negroes  in  Missouri,  either  to  prey 
Upon  the  community  as  paupers,  or  to  become  competitors  with  the  free 
white  laborer  for  wages.  The  removal  of  the  manumitted  slaves  is  a 
sine  qua  non  in  every  State  that  looks  to  deliverance  from  Slavery. 

The  alternatives  through  which  this  inexorable  condition  is  to  be 
reached  ought  to  be  well  considered  by  every  friend  of  emancipation. 
Missouri  may  be  delivered  by  selling  the  slaves  in  a  Southern  market, 
or  by  sending  them,  as  the  Indians  were  sent,  to  freeholds  abroad,  at 
the  expense  of  the  General  Government.  The  riddance  to  be  obtained 


25 

by  selling  the  slaves  of  Missouri,  their  owners  would  recoil  from  with 
commendable  repugnance.  It  is  a  great  error  to  impute  to  slave-owners 
generally,  but  especially  to  those  of  the  farming  States,  a  want  of  feel 
ing  for  their  slaves.  The  hearts  of  Southern  men,  though  slaveholders, 
are  alive  to  as  generous  and  tender  emotions  as  any  on  earth,  and  they 
feel  family  ties  bind  them  to  the  slaves  who  have  been  associated  in  its 
cares  and  labors,  almost  as  strongly  as  the  ties  of  consanguinity.  It  is 
the  reluctance  to  subject  them  to  more  intense  labor  under  overseers,  with 
out  the  family  sympathies  to  make  them  lenient,  that  forms  an  obstruction 
to  Missouri's  becoming  a  free  State  by  the  sale  of  that  class  of  her  peo 
ple.  As  freedmen,  neither  the  North  nor  the  South  will  receive  them; 
and  unless  a  better  home  is  made  for  them  abroad,  the  process  now 
going  forward  in  Missouri  to  emancipate  the  State  must  consign  them 
to  the  cotton  region.  The  immense  accession  to  her  white  population 
from  the  East,  during  the  last  year  and  this,  has  put  in  motion  a  mass 
of  another  hue  toward  the  South,  and  more  light  will  pursue  this  dark 
retreating  body,  as  it  follows  the  shadow  of  a  cloud  passing  from  our 
fields.  The  temptation  held  out  by  Missouri — the  middle  pathway  of 
nations — inviting  emigration  from  all  the  world,  is  now  too  great  to  be 
resisted  by  its  comparatively  small  body  of  slaves.  Here  the  emigrant 
from  every  State  in  the  Union  and  of  Europe  may  find  a  kinsman,  and 
men  from  all  the  world  will  find  themselves  in  the  midst  of  its  staples. 
Here  are  mountains  of  iron  and  wildernesses  of  timber,  and  the  earth 
teeming  with  coal  and  lead  and  other  minerals.  Materials  to  fill  the 
hand  of  man  with  machinery,  and  to  furnish  that  Promethean  heat 
with  which  he  gives  life  and  activity  to  the  world  of  his  creation.  Mis 
souri — seated  at  the  confluence  of  her  mighty  floods,  that  bring  with 
them  all  the  tribute  of  the  farthest  North  and  West,  and  make  return  with 
the  luxuries  of  the  richest  tropics  of  the  earth — with  one  hand  ex 
tended,  she  now  reaches  the  seaports  of  the  Atlantic  ;  she  is  stretch 
ing  the  other  to  the  Pacific  for  its  golden  treasures  and  the  wealth  of 
the  Indies.  It  is  madness  to  suppose  that  she  will  long  endure  the 
decrepitude  of  Slavery.  And  while  her  slaves  and  those  of  the  South 
ern  States  within  the  temperate  zone  are  an  encumbrance  to  them,  if 
set  free,  and  seated  within  the  tropics,  they  would  be  worth  much  to 
the  nation  and  to  the  world.  The  value  of  a  dependency  there,  made 
up  of  our  emancipated  blacks,  may  be  estimated  by  the  readiness  of 
some  of  our  statesmen  to  pay  $300;000,000  for  the  island  of  Cuba, 
which  the  law  of  gravitation,  that  attracts  feeble  countries  to  their 
strong  neighbors,  will  bring  to  us  before  long  without  payment,  and 
which,  if  we  should  now  purchase  it,  could  only  be  the  right  of  unrestrict 
ed  trade,  and  not  the  land  and  slaves,  which  ivould  still  belong  to  their 
present  owners. 

If  the  trade  of  Cuba,  with  its  one  million  laborers,  is  worth  this  vast 
sum,  how  shall  we  estimate  that  of  a  dependency  peopled  by  our 
4,000,000  of  freed  blacks,  whose  superior  intelligence  would  dominate 
all  the  races  of  the  tropics,  and  bring  them  under  our  influence — a  re 
gion  richer  than  any  other  tropical  country  in  the  world,  because  lying 
in  the  track  of  the  southeast  and  northeast  trade  winds,  which,  passing 
over  an  immense  expanse  of  ocean,  gather  moisture  that  is  precipitated 


26 

upon  the  lofty  mountains  of  the  interior,  and  create  the  largest  rivers 
on  the  globe,  and  make  the  land  bloom  with  eternal  verdnre.  For  this 
reason,  the  tropics  of  America  exceed  in  fertility  all  other  intertropical 
regions,  in  which  drouth  prevails  for  one  half  of  the  year,  and  the  other 
half  is  the  season  of  floods.  Instead,  therefore,  of  being  an  expense  to 
the  nation,  the  foundation  of  such  a  colony  would  be  the  grandest  com 
mercial  enterprise  of  the  age.  The  richest  tropics  in  the  world,  lying 
adjacent  to  us,  opened  up  to  us  by  a  people  speaking  our  own  language, 
deeply  imbued  with  our  ideas  of  government  and  religion,  leaning  upon 
us  for  support  and  guidance,  and  to  whom  the  climate  is  innocuous. 
How  different  would  our  India  be  from  that  of  Great  Britain,  where,  to 
make  a  market,  she  is  compelled  to  coerce  a  hostile  people,  speaking  a 
different  tongue,  having  a  different  religion  and  government,  distant 
from  her  thousands  of  miles,  and  with  a  climate  destructive  to  those 
through  whom  she  maintains  her  ascendency  ! 

Are  the  young  merchants  of  Boston  and  of  America  indifferent  to  an 
enterprise  which  would  give  to  our  commerce,  without  a  rival,  such  an 
empire  as  that  to  which  I  have  pointed  1 — an  empire  not  to  be  won  by 
cruelty  and  conquest,  but  by  peaceful  and  benignant  means,  by  impart 
ing  to  others  the  inestimable  blessing  of  liberty  which  we  enjoy,  and 
removing  from  our  midst  the  only  cause  which  threatens  the  prosperity 
and  stability  of  our  Union.  Are  the  merchants  of  Boston,  to  whom  I 
now  address  myself,  indifferent  to  that  other  grand  enterprise  which  has 
so  often  been  pointed  out  to  them  by  the  ablest  statesmen  of  our  coun 
try,  and  by  means  of  which  we  shall  contend  with  Europe  for  the  com 
merce  of  Asia  and  the  islands  of  the  East,  and  from  a  vantage  ground 
which  insures  our  success  ?  I  allude,  of  course,  to  the  highway  of  na 
tions  through  the  heart  of  our  country,  connecting  the  Atlantic  and 
Pacific  oceans.  Let  me  say  to  you,  that  it  is  this  great  highway,  giving 
to  our  race  its  seat  of  empire  within  the  temperate  zones  of  this  conti 
nent,  and  commanding  the  commerce  of  the  East,  which  is  to  strengthen 
them  for  the  civilization  and  peaceful  conquest  of  the  American  tropics, 
through  the  instrumentality  of  that  race  which  an  inscrutable  Provi 
dence  appears  to  have  placed  among  us  to  be  fitted  for  the  task.  We 
shall  then  see  the  great  Gulf  Stream,  which  gathers  its  mighty  volume 
beneath  the  tropics,  and  washes  the  whole  Atlantic  front  of  the  conti 
nent,  bearing  upon  its  bosom  to  all  our  cities  the  tributes  of  a  richer 
and  vaster  commerce  than  that  with  which  India  has  enriched  and  built 
up  mighty  nations,  to  perish  with  its  loss. 

It  is  this  connection  between  the  two  oceans  by  railroad  which  is  to 
make  for  the  Confederacy  five  great  free  States  beyond  the  Mississippi. 
Add  to  this  measure  one  which  shall  secure  to  every  man  a  homestead 
in  the  public  domain,  inalienable,  except  by  devise,  and  you  shall  see 
free  States  arise  like  magic  in  the  great  West — free,  because,  where 
every  man  is  a  landholder,  no  man  can  be  a  slaveholder  ;  and  so  well 
is  this  understood,  that  you  will  find  no  supporter  of  the  slaveholding 
oligarchy  who  can  be  induced  to  support  a  measure  by  which  the  public 
lands  will  pass  easily  and  rapidly  to  actual  settlers.  When  by  this 
process  the  number  and  the  power  of  the  free  States  are  multiplied,  and 
the  slave  States  lose  the  ability,  in  combination  with  that  interested 


27 

capital  elsewhere  which  always  sympathizes  with  the  capital  invested  in 
negroes,  to  command  the  Presidency  and  control  the  Government,  Sla 
very  will  cease  to  be  a  political  question  in  the  nation,  and  will  be  re 
mitted  to  the  people  within  the  States,  divested  of  all  political  motives 
for  maintaining  it,  to  be  dealt  with  as  an  economical  question.  The  re 
sult  will  be  emancipation  of  the  slaves,  upon  the  compensation  and  by 
the  consent  of  the  masters,  because  it  will  be  for  the  interest  of  all. 
The  fact  that  the  slaveholding  interest  has,  by  such  combination,  con 
trolled  the  Government,  and  commanded  its  powers  and  its  immense 
patronage,  is  of  itself  a  motive  for  sustaining  the  institution  infinitely 
greater  than  the  profit  it  brings  to  the  masters.  Take  that  away  by 
the  measures  which  will  create  in  the  least  possible  time  a  vast  prepon 
derance  of  free  States,  and  Slavery  must  stand  on  its  own  merits, 
stripped  of  the  strength  it  possesses — by  being,  in  fact,  the  Govern 
ment  of  this  country,  dispensing  a  patronage  of  $100,000,000  per  an 
num,  and  able  to  gratify  or  disappoint  the  wishes  of  every  man  of  am 
bition  in  the  nation — when  the  divine  institution  ceases  in  fact  to  be  the 
Government  of  the  United  States,  it  will  receive  no  more  honor  than 
the  divine  right  of  Kings,  in  the  person  of  some  deposed  and  fugitive 
dynasty.  How  many  who  swore  fealty  to  Louis  Philippe  are  now 
ready  to  take  service  with  the  Emperor  Napoleon  III  1  Will  those 
who  bow  to  the  black  idol  of  Slavery,  because  it  confers  upon  its  par 
tisans  the  honors  and  emoluments  of  the  State  and  National  Govern 
ments,  refuse  to  worship  at  the  loftier  and  purer  shrine  of  Liberty, 
when  the  same  motives  prompt  their  devotions  1 

I  believe  that,  when  Slavery  no  longer  wields  the  political  power  of 
this  great  Government,  it  will  fall  of  its  own  weight.  Emancipation 
and  the  removal  of  the  enfranchised  race  to  the  tropics  will  follow,  and 
the  Southern  States  will  fill  up  with  people  of  our  own  race ;  and  the 
pretext  now  put  forth  for  monopolizing  the  soil  by  slave  labor,  that  the 
white  man  cannot  work  in  that  climate,  will  be  found  to  be  a  sheer  fal 
lacy.  Nowhere  do  the  powers  of  the  white  race,  mental  and  physical, 
attain  greater  perfection.  And  are  we  to  be  told,  in  defiance  of  the 
decree  that  u  in  the  sweat  of  his  brow  man  should  live,"  that  the  high 
est  endowments  were  conferred  on  him  in  a  rich  and  genial  region,  that 
they  might  be  buried  in  indolence  ?  Fact  disproves  it,  as  well  as  the 
ory.  Throughout  the  whole  race-horse  clime,  the  white  man  is  stronger 
in  endurance  than  the  African.  Our  whole  country  is  in  the  temperate, 
not  the  torrid,  zone;  and  we  find  that,  even  in  the  cotton  country  of 
Texas,  the  emigrant  Germans  produce  the  best  and  highest-priced  cot 
ton,  and  more  of  it  to  the  acre,  than  is  grown  on  slave  plantations. 
When  the  cloud  passes  off  from  Virginia,  and  its  renovation  is  pre 
scribed  in  the  adjoining  Carolinas,  it  will  pass,  too,  from  their  worn-out 
lands,  and  white  freeholders  will  renew  them,  and  make  more  cotton 
from  their  hundred-acre  fields  than  will  be  obtained  from  plantations  of 
a  thousand  devastated  by  slave  culture.  This  wonder  is  already  open 
ing  the  eyes  of  farmers  in  Maryland  and  Virginia,  who  see  wheat  fields 
created  without  a  slave  making  ten-fold  to  the  acre  over  their  poor  crops 
spread  over  their  African  wastes.  The  great  mountain  plateau  that 
runs  through  Mexico,  and  follows  the  Pacific  down  into  the  tropics, 


28 

makes  the  only  region  where  civilization  has  touched  the  Indian,  and 
softened  his  savage  nature  ;  and  the  only  stable  Government  now  ex 
isting  in  these  regions  is  that  wielded  by  Rafael  Carrera,  the  Indian 
dictator  of  Guatemala.  The  negro  alone  can  reclaim  the  vast  level 
plains  and  pampas,  the  tierra  caliente  of  the  continent.  Shall  the  races 
conform  to  the  law  of  their  creation,  or  shall  we  attempt  to  change  the 
order  of  nature,  and  bring  retribution  upon  ourselves  by  striving  to 
subvert  with  our  devices  the  decrees  of  Omnipotence  1 

How  grandly  our  nation  would  loom  up  in  the  eyes  of  the  world,  if, 
abandoning  the  policy  which  makes  it  the  taskmaster  of  slaves,  it  should 
lay  its  hands  to  the  work  not  only  of  restoring  freedom  to  the  race  which 
has  so  long  and  so  faithfully  served  us  and  our  fathers,  but  to  recom 
pense  them  for  their  long  servitude,  by  giving  them  all  homes  in  regions 
congenial  to  their  natures,  and  guarantying  to  them  a  free  government 
of  their  own,  in  which,  without  ceasing  to  be  a  part  of  this  country, 
they  should  still  be  to  themselves,  and  escape  the  presence  of  that 
social  subordination  and  inferiority  inseparable  from  the  contact  of  dif 
ferent  races  in  the  same  community.  The  moral  power  and  grandeur 
of  the  act  would  challenge  the  admiration  of  the  world,  and  make  our 
later  fame  surpass  the  glory  of  the  great  struggle  which  gave  us  a  place 
among  nations. 


I 


APPENDIX. 


Containing  extracts  from  letters  from  Mr.  Jefferson,  from  speeches  of  Hon.  Mr. 
Trumbull  of  Illinois  and  Hon.  Preston  King  of  New  York,  Resolution  of  Hon. 
J.  R.  Doolittle  of  Wisconsin,  Letters  of  Governor  Sissell  of  Illinois,  Robert 
Wickliffe  of  Kentucky,  James  O.  Brodhead  of  Missouri,  Hon.  Gerrit  Smith  of 
New  York,  Benjamin  Silliman  of  Yale  College,  Rev.  Theodore  Parker  of  Boston, 
and  extracts  from  the  letters  of  several  free  colored  men  of  education  and  intelli 
gence,  on  the  subject  of  the  emancipation  and  colonization  of  the  blacks  in  the 
tropics  of  America. 

The  colonization  of  our  free  blacks  in  the  tropical  regions  of  America  was  sug 
gested  by  Mr,  Jefferson.  It  is  a  subject  of  such  magnitude  and  interest  that  I  shall 
quote  two  paragraphs  from  his  letters,  to  show  that  he  contemplated  this  plan,  and 
deemed  it  absolutely  essential  to  the  safety  of  our  nation.  In  a  letter  addressed  to 
Mr.  Sparks,  he  said : 

"  The  second  object,  and  the  most  interesting  to  us,  as  coming  home  to  our  physi- 
'  cal  and  moral  characters,  to  our  happiness  and  safety,  is  to  provide  an  asylum,  to 

<  which  we  can,  by  degrees,  send  the  whole  of  that  population  (the  negroes)  from 
i  among  us,  and  establish  them  under  our  patronage  and  protection,  as  a  separate, 
'  free,  and  independent  people,  in  some  country  and  climate  friendly  to  human  life 
1  and  happiness." 

In  a  letter  to  Mr.  Coles,  he  said  : 

"  Yet  the  hour  of  emancipation  is  advancing  in  the  march  of  time.  It  will  come  ; 
1  and  whether  brought  on  by  the  generous  energies  of  our  own  minds,  or  by  the 

<  bloody  process  of  St.  Domingo,  excited  and  conducted  by  the  power  of  our  present 
'  enemy,  if  once  stationed  permanently  within  our  country,  and  offering  asylum  and 
'  arms  to  the  oppressed,  is  a  leaf  of  our  history  not  yet  turned  over." 

I  shall  also  embrace  this  opportunity  to  publish  a  number  of  letters  received  after 
the  speech  made  by  me  on  the  14th  January,  1858,  in  which  this  topic  was  broached. 
Among  others,  one  from  Robert  Wickliffe,  Esq.,  the  most  eminent  lawyer  of  Ken 
tucky,  and  one  of  the  largest  slaveholders  in  that  State  ;  one  from  Gov.  Bissell,  of 
Illinois  ;  a  letter  from  James  0.  Brodhead,  of  Missouri,  formerly  a  State  Senator, 
and  now  a  distinguished  lawyer  ;  an  extract  from  a  speech  of  Senator  King,  of  New 
York ;  and  an  extract  from  a  speech  of  Senator  Trumbull,  of  Illinois :  and  a  res 
olution  offered  by  Senator  Doolittle,  of  Wisconsin.  I  shall  alao  publish  the  letters 
of  Gerrit  Smith,  Theodore  Parker,  and  Benjamin  Silliman,  and  several  very  inter 
esting  letters  from-  free  colored  men  of  intelligence  and  education — all  showing  that 
the  plan  struck  out  by  the  philosophical  mind  of  Mr.  Jefferson,  and  which  I  have 
attempted  to  bring  to  public  attention,  contains  the  true  solution  of  the  Slavery 
question  in  this  country,  and  will  finally  unite  all  interests  for  its  accomplishment. 

Extract  from  the  Speech  of  Hon.  Lyman  Tmmbull,  of  Illinois,  delivered  at  Chicago, 

August  7,  1858. 

The  charge  that  we  want  to  have  anything  to  do  with  negroes,  is  utterly  untrue. 
It  is  a  false  clamor,  raised  to  mislead  the  public  mind.  Our  policy  is,  to  have 
nothing  to  do  with  them  ;  and  I  myself  am  very  much  inclined  to  favor  the  project 


30 

suggested  by  Mr.  Blair,  of  Missouri,  at  the  last  session  of  Congress.  He  suggested 
a  plan  for  colonizing  our  free  negroes,  who  are  willing  to  go,  somewhere  in  Central 
America,  where  an  arrangement  could  be  made  by  which  their  rights  may  be  se 
cured  to  them.  The  policy  now  is  such  as  to  prevent  emancipation  ;  and  although 
we  do  not  want  to  interfere  with  the  domestic  institution  of  Slavery  in  the  States, 
still  we  wish  to  interpose  no  obstacle  to  the  people  of  those  States  in  getting  rid  of 
their  slaves  whenever  they  think  fit  to  do  so. 

We  know  that  many  of  the  slave  States  have  passed  laws  prohibiting  the  emanci 
pation  of  slaves  by  their  masters,  unless  they  are  taken  out  of  the  State.  The  result 
of  this  legislation  is,  that  emancipation  must  cease.  There  are  thousands  of  free 
negroes  in  Virginia,  but  that  policy  is  now  stopped,  because  it  is  impracticable,  there 
being  no  way  of  disposing  of  the  negro  when  emancipation  is  prohibited.  Many 
masters  in  the  South  desire  to  emancipate  their  slaves,  and  especially  is  this  the 
case  as  they  approach  death  ;  for,  however  they  may  reason  while  in  health,  and 
thoughtless  of  that  event  which  levels  all  alike,  they  are  very  apt,  in  making  up  their 
last  account  and  disposing  of  their  property,  to  think  of  the  wrong  and  injustice  they 
have  done  by  holding  some  of  their  fellow-men  in  bondage,  and  they  are  quite  willing 
to  emancipate  them.  Thousands  would  be  emancipated  if  there  was  any  place  to 
which  they  could  go.  I,  for  one,  am  very  much  disposed  to  favor  the  colonization 
of  such  free  negroes  as  are  willing  to  go  to  Central  America.  I  want  to  have  noth 
ing  to  do  either  with  the  free  negro  or  the  slave  negro.  We,  the  Republican  party, 
are  the  white  man's  party.  We  are  for  free  white  men,  and  for  making  white  labor 
respectable  and  honorable,  which  it  never  can  be  when  negro  slave  labor  is  brought 
into  competition  with  it. 

We  wish  to  settle  the  Territories  with  free  white  men,  and  we  are  willing  that  this 
negro  race  should  go  anywhere  that  it  can  to  better  its  condition,  wishing  them  God 
speed  wherever  they  go.  We  believe  it  is  better  for  us  that  they  should  not  be 
among  us.  I  believe  it  will  be  better  for  them  to  go  elsewhere. 

A  Voice.    Where  to  ? 

Mr.  T.  I  would  say,  to  any  Central  American  State  that  will  make  an  arrange 
ment  by  which  they  will  be  secure  in  their  rights  until  they  arrive  at  a  time  when 
they  can  protect  and  take  care  of  themselves. 

Extract  from  the  Speech  of  Preston  King  in  the  Senate  on  the  Oregon  Bill,  (Con 
gressional  Globe,  p.  2207,  vol.  36.) 

The  only  mode  in  which  we  can  relieve  our  country,  relieve  the  blacks  and  the 
whites,  divide  these  races,  and  provide  separate  homes  for  them,  is  by  some  scheme 
which  will  meet  the  approbation  of  both — one  which  the  parties  themselves  will  exe 
cute.  I  think  well  of  a  scheme  presented  of  a  colony  in  South  America — or  Central 
America,  perhaps,  is  better — extending  to  it  such  aid  and  protection  from  this  Gov 
ernment  as  would  be  perfectly  legitimate  and  proper,  in  the  hope  that  such  a  meas 
ure  would  be  the  best  means  of  accomplishing  a  result  so  desirable  for  the  benefit 
of  both  white  and  black.  I  think  some  such  result  as  this  will  come,  in  one  way  or 
another,  from  the  collision  of  interests,  from  inevitable  causes,  and  from  the  compe 
tition  of  free  and  slave  labor. 

*  *  *  As  I  said,  the  condition  of  things  now  is  such  as  requires  something  of 
this  sort.  They  are  looking  to  emancipation  in  Missouri,  beyond  all  question.  Their 
newspapers  are  discussing  it,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that,  in  other  border  States,  that 
idea  would  be  more  generally  entertained,  if  a  rational  easy  mode  of  providing  for 
the  black  population  was  ready  at  hand.  Indeed,  I  remember,  when  the  annexa 
tion  of  Texas  was  discussed  here,  and  through  the  country,  that  one  of  the  strongest 
arguments  used  in  favor  of  annexation,  through  all  that  part  of  the  country  where  I 
reside,  was,  that  bringing  Texas  into  the  Union  as  a  more  extreme  Southern  State 
would  draw  off  the  black  population  from  all  the  border  slave  States,  and  that  they 
would  become  free  States.  *  *  *  I  speak  of  this  to  bring  the  subject  to  the 
attention  of  the  Senate,  and  to  avow  my  wish  and  disposition,  in  any  practicable 
mode,  to  aid  in  providing  such  a  place  for  the  free  blacks  of  the  country. 

July  14,  1858.     Senate  of  the  United  States,  ( Congressional  Globe,  vol.  36,  p.  3034.) 
Mr.  Doolittle,  of  Wisconsin,  submitted  the  following  resolution,  which  lies  over 

under  the  rule : 

"  Whereas  the  numerous  disabilities  to  which  free  persons  of  color,  of  African 


31 

descent,  are  subjected  in  many  of  the  free  States,  have  made  it  desirable  on  the 
part  of  large  numbers  of  them  to  seek  elsewhere  a  more  favorable  field  for  their 
labor  and  enterprise ;  and  whereas  the  same  class  of  persons  is  regarded  with  still 
greater  disfavor  in  the  slaveholding  States,  from  considerations  deemed  so  controlling 
that  further  emancipation  in  many  of  them  has  been  prohibited  by  law,  unless  the 
persons  emancipated  shall  be  at  the  same  time  removed  beyond  the  jurisdiction  of 
the  State ;  and  in  some  of  them  the  graver  question  is  seriously  entertained,  whether 
persons  of  African  descent,  who  are  now  free,  shall  not  be  again  reduced  to  slavery 
if  they  continue  to  remain  within  their  jurisdiction  5  and  whereas,  in  Yucatan  and 
Central  and  South  America,  there  are  vast  regions,  almost  uninhabited,  of  the  most 
beautiful  and  productive  countries  in  the  world,  in  a  climate  well  adapted  to  the 
constitution  of  the  African  race,  to  develop  its  greatest  power  and  highest  activity : 
therefore, 

"  Resolved,  That  the  Committee  on  Foreign  Relations  inquire  into  the  expediency 
of  acquiring  by  treaty,  in  Yucatan,  Central  or  South  America,  the  rights  and  privi 
leges  of  settlement  and  of  citizenship  for  the  benefit  of  such  persons  of  color,  of  Afri 
can  descent,  as  may  voluntarily  desire  to  emigrate  from  the  United  States,  and  form 
themselves  into  a  colony  or  colonies,  under  the  laws  of  the  State  or  States  to  which 
they  emigrate  ;  the  United  States,  in  consideration  of  the  commercial  advantages  of 
free  trade  with  such  colony  or  colonies,  making  and  securing  the  necessary  and 
proper  engagements  to  maintain  them  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  rights  and  privileges 
acquired  by  such  treaty  or  treaties." 

Letter  from  Governor  Bissell  of  Illinois. — (Extract.} 

SPRINGFIELD,  ILLINOIS,  January  27,  1858. 

I  have  been  greatly  interested  in  the  perusal  of  your  speech.  *  *  *  You 
have  undoubtedly  struck  the  right  chord,  and  I  pray  God  that  you  and  I  may  live  to 
see  the  day  when  your  views  will  be  carried  into  practice.  I  deem  your  plan  per 
fectly  feasible ;  and  although  some  difficulties  we  may  expect  to  find  in  reducing  it 
to  practice,  yet  they  are  not  insurmountable.  But  I  only  designed  at  this  moment 
to  thank  vou  for  the  speech,  and  to  express  my  hearty  approbation  of  its  doctrine. 

Ever  yours,  WILLIAM  H.  BISSELL. 

To  Hon.  F.  P.  BLAIR. 

I  desire  to  call  especial  attention  BO  the  letter  of  Mr.  Wickliffe  ;  he  was  a  cotempo- 
rary  of  Jefferson,  and  one  of  his  most  earnest  and  able  supporters  5  age  has  not  di 
minished  the  vigor  of  an  intellect  which,  for  half  a  century,  placed  him  at  the  head  of 
the  bar  of  Kentucky,  with  the  strongest  men  in  the  Union  for  his  competitors.  Mr. 
Wickliffe  is  one  of  the  wealthiest  men  and  largest  slaveholders  of  his  State. 

Letter  from  7?.  Wickliffe,  Esq. 

LEXINGTON,  KY.,  March  13,  1858. 

DEAR  SIR  :  My  ill  health  has  prevented  me  from  acknowledging  before  the  favor  you 
have  done  me  in  sending  me  your  speech,  delivered  in  the  House  of  Representatives 
on  the  14th  of  January,  upon  the  subject  of  colonizing  free  blacks  from  the  United 
States  in  Central  America.  In  early  life  I  thought  much  on  the  subject  of  which 
your  speech  treats,  and  my  thoughts  went  even  farther.  I  have  believed  that  the 
Government  of  the  United  States  ought  not  only  to  acquire  sufficient  territory  to 
create  a  State  large  enough  for  colonizing  the  free  blacks,  but  that  an  office  should 
be  created  to  remove  them  to  their  country,  and  a  fund  provided  to  purchase  all 
slaves  whose  masters  were  willing  to  sell.  The  establishment  of  the  Colonization 
Society,  however,  and  the  extensive  bodies  of  sugar  and  cotton  lands  acquired  by 
the  General  Government,  destroyed  all  hopes  I  ever  entertained  of  achieving  my 
object  in  my  time.  I  am  glad,  however,  you  have  brought  the  subject  before  Con 
gress  and  the  world,  and  hope  that  something  may  be  done  that  will  not  only  do  im 
mediate  credit  to  the  country,  by  adopting  some  mode  to  bring  perpetual  Slavery  to 
a  terminating  point,  as  well  as  leaving  no  longer  food  to  the  disputants  about  the 
question  of  power  between  the  South  and  the  North. 

I  thank  you,  sir,  for  this  mark  of  your  attention,  and  believe  me  to  be  ever  yours, 
respectfully,  R.  WICKLIFFE. 

To  F.  P.  BLAIR,  Jun. 


32 

Extract  of  a  Letter  from  Hon.  James  0.  Brodhead. 

BOWLIXGREEN,  PIKE  Co.,  Mo.,  Jan.  23,  1858. 

BEAR  SIR  :  You  will  permit  one  who  has  taken  a  more  than  ordinary  degree  of 
personal  interest  in  your  movements  for  some  years  past,  to  congratulate  you  upon 
the  crowning  effort  of  your  life,  in  the  delivery  of  your  speech  on  the  Central  Amer 
ican  question. 

There  is  a  tone  of  enlarged  patriotism  about  the  proposition  embraced  in  your 
resolution,  which  has  been  in  vain  looked  for  in  the  vapid  and  ephemeral  efforts  of 
party  hacks  for  the  last  ten  years,  in  Congress  or  out  of  it.  Besides,  the  idea  is  a 
practical  one,  if  not  practicable,  and,  at  the  same  time,  it  is  national,  divested  of  all 
sectionalism.  It  takes  out  of  the  mouth  of  the  slaveholder  the  words  which  are 
always  first  on  his  lips  when  a  Northern  man  says  anything  about  the  negro,  "  that 
is  none  of  your  business."  In  reply,  the  Northern  man  can  say,  it  is  our  business, 
for  we  have  free  negroes  as  well  as  you  ;  it  is  for  our  interest,  as  well  as  yours,  to  get 
rid  of  a  degraded  race,  aliens  to  us  in  political  and  social  relations  ;  and  thus  it  is 
that  a  fatal  blow  is  given  to  Southern  fanaticism,  at  a  point  where  it  cannot  be  par 
ried.  Many  a  Southern  man  has  refused  to  look  into  the  question,  and  sheltered 
himself  behind  that  declaration,  "  It  is  none  of  your  business." 

Letter  from  Gerrit  Smith. 

PETERBORO,  April  7,  1858. 

DEAR  SIR  :  You  were  so  good  as  to  send  me  a  copy  of  your  speech  of  January 
14th.  Never  until  to-day  did  I  give  it  an  attentive  reading.  I  am  now  prepared  to 
thank  you  for  it  very  heartily,  and  to  confess  that  it  has  enlightened  and  gratified 
me.  *  *  * 

Greatly  should  I  rejoice  in  your  proposed  outlet  for  our  free  colored  people.  That 
outlet  once  provided,  and  vast  numbers  of  this  people  would  hasten  to  avail  them 
selves  of  it.  I  would  have  the  immigration  entirely  voluntary,  and  so  would 
you.  *  *  * 

Yours,  &c.,  GERRIT  SMITH. 

F.  P.  BLAIR,  Jun. 

Letter  from  Gerrit  Smith. 

PETERBORO,  April  24,  1858. 

DEAR  SIR  :    *  *     I  agree  fully  with  you,  that  the  mass  of  the  whites  in  the 

slave  States  would  be  in  favor  of  emancipation,  could  an  outlet  for  the  emancipated 
be  afforded.  Such  an  outlet  there  would  be,  were  there  a  well-protected  black  State 
in  Mexico  or  Central  America  for  our  blacks  to  go  to.  The  further  it  were  from  us, 
and  the  more  different  its  soil  aad  climate  from  ours,  the  less  probability  would  there 
be  of  a  desire  on  either  part  to  have  that  State  become  a  member  of  our  Union. 

Among  all  feasible  things,  there  is  nothing  that,  in  my  judgment,  would  so  much 
promote  a  peaceful  abolition  of  Slavery  as  your  son's  plan.  Let  him  be  careful  that 
no  part  of  it  be  couched  in  words  that  would  offend  the  blacks,  or  invade  their  self- 
respect.  The  plan,  to  succeed,  must  be  such  as  will  in  every  way  please  them,  and 
increase,  rather  than  waste,  their  too  little  self-respect. 

Yery  truly  yours,  GERRIT  SMITH. 

To  F.  P.  BLAIR,  Sen. 

PETERBORO,  April  13,  1858. 

DEAR  SIR  :  It  is  with  very  great  pleasure  I  received  your  letter.  The  copies  of 
your  sou's  admirable  speech,  which  you  say  you  sent  me,  I  have  not  yet  received. 

I  am  decidedly  in  favor  of  inviting  our  free  colored  people  to  colonize  in  Central 
America.  Africa  is  too  far  off.  The  idea  of  returning  to  her  all  her  children  upon 
the  continent  and  islands  of  America,  is  absurd.  They  will  at  no  very  distant  day 
congregate  in  our  western  equatorial  regions,  say  within  fifteen  or  twenty  degrees  of 
the  equator. 

But  I  will  consent  to  no  form  of  compulsion  to  promote  this  colonization.  Let 
the  world  be  all  before  the  black  as  well  as  the  white  man.  Let  them  be  entirely . 
free  to  stay  where  they  are,  or  go  where  they  please  ;  and  wherever  they  may  be,  let 
them  not  be  denied  a  single  right  of  their  manhood. 

Yours,  GERRIT  SMITH. 

F.  P.  BLAIR,  Esq. 


83 

Letter  from  B.  Sittiman. 

NEW  HAVEN,  CONN., ,  1858. 

DEAR  SIR  :  Although  late,  I  beg  you  to  accept  my  thanks  for  your  very  able, 
instructive,  and  interesting  speech  of  January  14th,  1858,  of  which  I  received  a  copy 
franked  by  your  name.  I  perused  that  speech  with  great  attention.  It  was  patriotic, 
far-seeing,  and  benevolent,  as  regards  that  already  powerful  body  which  must  one 
day  become  a  dangerous  element  of  our  population. 

It  is  most  unwise — and  especially  for  those  States  in  which  this  population  is 
condensed,  and  in  which  it  is  daily  increasing  with  alarming  rapidity,  it  is  infatua 
tion — to  ignore  present  evil  and  future  danger. 

Having  been  somewhat  acquainted  with  Missouri,  and  especially  with  the  beauti 
ful  city  of  St.  Louis,  which  is  so  honorably  represented  by  yourself,  I  rejoice  in  the 
auspicious  prospect  now  opening,  that  Slavery  will  eventually  retire  from  its  borders. 

Yours,  respectfully  and  truly,  B.  SILLIMAN. 

Letter  from  Rev.  Theodore  Parker. 

BOSTON,  Jan,  26,  1858. 

DEAR  SIR  :  Excuse  a  stranger  for  troubling  you  with  a  word.  I  have  just  read 
your  excellent  speech — it  is  published  in  the  Daily  Advertiser  of  this  morning,  the 
most  important  journal  in  New  England.  Allow  me  to  thank  you  for  it  with  all  my 
heart.  I  think  there  has  been  no  such  Anti-Slavery  speech  in  Congress,  since  Mr. 
Sumner's,  until  Mr.  Hale  spoke  last  week.  It  ^s  a  good  sign,  when  the  member 
from  Missouri  can  say  such  things. 

Yours,  &c.,  T.  PARKER. 

Letter  from  Alfred  V.  Thompson,  (a  black  man.) 

CINCINNATI,  OHIO,  June  5,  1858. 

SIR  :  I  have  read  your  speech  two  or  three  times  on  the  colonizing  of  colore4 
people  in  South  America,  and  am  much  interested  in  it,  and  must  say  I  am  highly 
pleased  with  the  plan.  I  have  showed  it  to  several,  and  they  are  much  pleased  with 
the  document,  and  have  worn  out  the  speech,  and  hope  you  will  send  us  three  copies. 

It  is  just  the  plan  for  us  disfranchised  Americans.  I  am  natnrally  of  an  enter 
prising  disposition,  and  have  never  found  any  cause  to  so  elate  me  since  I  espoused 
emigration  in  1842,  when  we  left  for  Liberia  with  the  view  that  we  as  a  people  could 
not  attain  to  any  honorable  position  in  this  country,  nationally  speaking.  I  was 
much  pleased  with  our  condition  in  Africa,  from  the  fact  that  I  saw  no  superior  on 
account  of  color.  (The  Government  was  a  Republic  something  like  this.  I  don't 
like  the  British  Government,  though  I  prefer  it  to  our  condition  in  this.)  Our  rea 
son  for  leaving  Liberia,  after  living  there  for  eighteen  months,  was  on  account  of  bad 
health,  and  through  the  advice  and  persuasion  of  Dr.  J.  W.  Lugenbeel,  our  attend 
ant  family  physician,  who  said  if  we  remained  we  should  certainly  die ;  therefore,  we 
left  for  Jamaica.  Out  of  the  company  of  emigrants  that  left  America  for  Africa, 
numbering  two  hundred  and  twenty-five,  at  the  expiration  of  eighteen  months  there 
was  not  living  more  than  eighty-five  or  one  hundred.  We  lost  two  children  in  the 
undertaking  ;  my  wife  and  myself  suffered  immensely.  After  we  left  for  Jamaica,  we 
stopped  for  three  months  at  Sierra  Leone,  Africa.  We  lived  in  Kingston  for  three  years, 
and  in  other  parts  of  the  island.  Lived  in  Boston,  New  York,  and  Philadephia,  for 
two  years,  having  remained  out  of  the  United  States  several  years,  and  having  trav 
elled  considerable  at  my  own  expense,  I  might  say  I  have  some  experience  in  emi 
gration.  But,  notwithstanding  all  this  loss  of  time  and  deprivation,  I  have  acquired 
a  small  property  and  a  nice  little  business.  But,  with  the  proper  assistance,  I  am 
willing  to  try  it  again,  though  my  wife  says  she  will  never  leave  the  land  of  her  fore 
fathers.  There  is  a  great  demand 'on  me  from  the  colored  population  for  information 
in  regard  to  this  project,  and  I  hope  you  will  send  me  the  necessary  documents  to 
post  myself.  You  mention  in  your  speech  several  documents  that  would  be  of  im 
mense  advantage  in  defending  my  position.  I  wish  to  know  how  and  by  what  means 
the  necessary  aid  and  protection  is  to  be  given,  and  if  in  your  opinion  the  Govern 
ment  will  give  any  assistance.  We  have  had  three  meetings  on  this  subject,  and 
thought  of  forming  ourselves  into  a  joint  stock  company,  and  issue  $100  bonds  and 
aid  ourselves  as  much  as  possible,  and  to  beg  from  individuals,  State  Governments, 
sell  bonds,  &cv  &c.  Please  inform  me  where  I  can  obtain  a  constitution  and  by- 

3 


34 

laws  of  the  Massachusetts  Emigrant  Aid  Society.  I  learned  my  trade  with  Mr.  An 
drew  Johnson,  of  Tennessee,  Ex-Governor,  now  member  of  the  Senate,  who  can  give 
any  information  in  regard  to  me.  Pie  will  recollect  the  boy  he  used  to  call  Alfred, 
You  will  do  me  a  great  favor  to  answer  this  soon. 

I  am,  with  much  respect,  your  most  obedient  servant, 

ALFRED  VANACTER  THOMPSON. 
Letter  from  J.  D,  Harris,  (a  black  man.} 

CLEVELAND,  OHIO,  Dec.  10,  1858. 

DEAR  SIR  :  Having  full  faith  in  the  principle  of  your  able  speech  delivered  in 
Congress  Jan.  14,  1858,  in  which  you  urge  the  necessity  of  acquiring  territory  out 
side  of  the  United  States  for  the  settlement  of  the  freed  colored  people,  I  take  the 
liberty  of  addressing  you  this  letter. 

I  assure  you  that  the  thinking  portion  of  the  colored  people  appreciate  your  ef 
forts  in  that  direction ;  for  while  it  is  evident  that  the  white  and  black  races  cannot 
exist  in  this  country  on  terms  of  equality,  it  is  equally  certain  the  latter  will  not 
long  be  content  with  anything  less. 

Against  the  Government,  its  laws,  and  its  customs,  they  are  fast  beginning  to 
rebel;  and  even  while  I  write,  in  consequence  of  a  late  fugitive  slave  case,  this  spirit 
is  spreading  to  a  marvellous  extent. 

The  Government  drives  us  to  Canada,  where  we  are  indeed  free,  but  where  it  is 
plain  we  cannot  become  a  very  great  people.  We  want  more  room,  where  it  is  not 
quite  so  cold — we  want  to  be  identified  with  the  ruling  power  of  a  nation :  and  un 
less  this  be  obtained,  Canada  must  be  looked  to  as  a  strong  military  post  for  future 
use,  in  the  very  vitals  of  America. 

But  you  will  not  forgive  me  for  addressing  you  (if  at  all)  in  a  tone  so  pointed, 
and  I  therefore  cease,  humbly  beseeching  you  will  bring  the  subject  again  before 
Congress  ;  and  when  you  have  so  far  progressed  as  to  need  an  agent  among  our  peo 
ple,  whether  it  be  to  spread  such  information  as  will  awaken  them  to  their  true  in 
terests,  or  to  carry  out  some  plan  or  expedition  that  may  be  devised,  begging  to  be 
remembered  as  one  who  deeply  feels  the  present  embarassing  condition  of  his  race, 
and  who  is  willing  to  sacrifice  his  time,  his  comfort,  and  his  life,  in  order  to  create 
for  them  a  higher  arid  more  ennobling  position. 

I  have  the  honor  to  be,  &c.,  J.  D.  HARRIS. 

Letter  from  M.  R.  Delany,  (a  black  man.} 

CHATHAM,  C.  W.,  Feb.  24,  1858. 

SIR  :  I  take  the  liberty  of  sending  you,  which  I  beg  you  will  at  your  earliest 
leisure  peruse,  a  paper  written  and  reported  by  myself  to  a  Convention  of  colored 
people  at  the  place  indicated,  which  was  then  accepted  in  the  form  of  a  report 
emanating  from  a  committee. 

I  beg,  sir,  that  you  will  give  it  your  oarliest  attention,  arid  favor  me  with  your 
opinion  thereon,  knowing  that  as  an  enlightened  statesman  you  will  readily  account 
for  anything  that  may  be  too  pointed  or  tart. 

I  have  not  as  yet  had  the  gratification  of  seeing  your  speech,  but  have  been 
strongly  requested  by  Messrs.  Holly  and  Whitfield,  of  New  Haven  and  Buffalo,  to 
communicate  with  you  on  the  subject.  I  was  at  the  time  I  wrote  the  report  a  resi 
dent  of  Pittsburgh,  Pa. 

See  report  on  the  Political  Destiny  of  the  Colored  Race  on  the  American  Conti 
nent,  page  33. 

I  have  the  honor  to  be,  sir,  your  most  obedient  servant,          M.  R.  DELANY. 

From  Rev.  James  T.  Holly,  of  New  Haven,  Conn.,  Rector  of  St.  Luke's. 

HON.  SIR  :  As  the  communication  I  voluntarily  intruded  upon  your  attention  in 
relation  to  your  recent  speech  in  favor  of  colonizing  the  free  blacks  in  Central 
America  has  been  so  kindly  received  by  you,  I  am  encouraged  to  pursue  the  sub 
ject,  especially  since  you  have  given  me  the  liberty  to  do  so. 

I  have  already  called  your  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  subject  has  actively  occu 
pied  the  attention  of  this  class  of  persons  themselves  since  1854,  when  an  organiza 
tion  was  formed  among  them,  to  promote  their  own  emigration  to  the  West  Indies, 


85 

Central  and  South  America.  I  now  wish  to  speak  of  the  extent  of  this  organiza 
tion,  its  sympathizers,  and  the  steps  that  have  been  taken  to  attain  its  end. 

You  have  doubtless  noticed,  by  the  copy  of  the  published  proceedings  of  its  or 
ganic  Convention  which  I  transmitted  to  you,  that  delegates  from  the  British  Prov 
ince  of  Canada  and  eleven  States  of  this  Union  (three  of  them  being  slave  States) 
assembled  in  that  Convention.  And  in  the  official  organization  of  the  National 
Board  as  a  Central  Executive  Committee,  corresponding  members  among  the  free 
colored  people  of  no  less  than  five  slaveholding  States  were  attached  to  that  Board. 

But  even  the  organization  in  its  extent  is  but  a  feeble  expression  of  the  growing 
feelings  of  discontent  at  their  anomalous  condition  in  this  country,  now  rife  among 
the  free  blacks,  both  North  and  South.  Many  are  not  identified  with  this  move 
ment,  because  they  look  upon  the  effort  to  remove  and  colonize  themselves  as 
wholly  impracticable  without  the  helping  hand  of  men  of  power,  influence,  and 
•wealth,  among  the  whites  of  this  country.  And  despairing  now  to  obtain  this  in 
fluence  in  favor  of  their  removal  to  the  intertropical  regions  of  this  continent  whilst 
the  African  colonisation  scheme  preoccupied  the  attention  of  the  American  people, 
they  have  looked  upon  this  organization  of  their  own  people  as  a  fond  Utopia,  to  be 
dreamed  of,  but  never  to  be  realized.  Hence  they  have  been  too  hopeless  of  ac 
complishing  their  heart's  desire  to  join  publicly  in  this  movement  hitherto. 

But  now  that  your  speech  in  Congress  opens  a  new  era  in  their  hopes,  and  they 
thereby  witness  the  dawn  of  a  brighter  day  for  the  successful  accomplishment  of 
their  hopes,  I  can  assure  you  that  thousands  can  be  readily  enrolled  as  emigrants 
to  the  intertropical  regions  of  our  continent  with  the  slightest  effort.  I  speak  now 
From  a  familiar  and  somewhat  extended  acquaintance  and  intercourse  with  them, 
with  especial  reference  to  this  subject,  during  the  past  five  years,  by  travelling  and 
sojourning  among  them  in  the  New  England,  Middle,  and  Northwestern  States  and 
Canada — having  at  the  same  time  met  and  conversed  with  free  colored  men  from 
almost  every  slave  State  in  our  Union, 

I  am  confident  that  with  proper  inducements  to  be  held  out  before  them  in  re 
gard  to  security  for  liberty,  property,  and  prospects  for  well  doing,  I  could  muster 
two  hundred  emigrant  families,  or  about  one  thousand  free  colored  persons,  annual 
ly,  for  the  next  five  years,  of  the  very  best  class  for  colonial  settlement  and  industry, 
from  various  parts  of  the  United  States  and  Canada,  who  will  gladly  embark  for 
homes  in  our  American  tropics.  At  the  end  of  this  period,  it  would  need  no  espe 
cial  efforts  to  promote  the  emigration,  because  it  would  regulate  itself  thereafter. 
Five  thousand  pioneers  by  this  time  having  already  settled  themselves  in  Central 
America,  having  commenced  to  do  well  in  their  new  homes,  would  spread  the  glad 
tidings  among  friends  and  relations  remaining  behind  them  in  the  United  States, 
and  the  intelligence  flying  from  family  to  family  like  an  electric  spark,  a  spontane 
ous  emigration,  double  that  of  the  first,  will  follow  in  the  second  five  years,  and  this 
number  will  be  trebled  or  quadrupled  in  the  succeeding  decade. 

The  feelings  of  the  free  blacks  in  relation  to  African  colonization  are  no  criterioa 
by  which  to  judge  of  the  success  of  American  intertropical  emigration.  The  blacks 
have  the  most  inveterate  prejudice  against  being  separated  from  the  New  World, 
that  has  been  the  field  of  their  labors  and  sufferings  for  the  past  three  centuries.  It 
is  a  little  hard  even  to  leave  the  very  spot  on  which  they  chanced  to  be  born,  for 
they  are  a  very  domestic  race,  and  strong  in  their  local  attachments.  Nevertheless, 
they  can  and  will  easily  reconcile  themselves  to  the  irresistible  fate  of  local  separa 
tion  from  the  whites  of  this  country,  when  they  can  locate  on  the  same  continent, 
within  a  few  days  sail  of  the  scenes  of  their  nativity,  and  situated,  as  they  would  be, 
in  the  grand  American  thoroughfare  between  our  Atlantic  and  Pacific  States.  This 
constant  intercourse  they  would  enjoy  with  white  Americans,  by  means  of  travel 
through  the  tropics  between  the  two  ocean  shores  of  our  country,  would  make 
the  blacks  feel  as  if  they  had  not  lost  their  homes  with  us }  and,  therefore,  would 
render  them  contented  and  happy  in  their  lot.  This  can  never  be  the  case  in  Afri 
can  colonization,  since  by  this  scheme  they  are  not  only  expatriated  from  their  coun 
try,  but  also  exiled  from  our  Western  World.  Hence,  I  believe,  I  have  data  from 
personal  knowledge,  which  will  fully  justify  the  expectation,  that  with  proper  efforts, 
more  emigrants  of  this  class  will  be  removed  to  Central  America  in  ten  years  than 
has  been  removed  to  Liberia  during  the  forty  rears  efforts  of  the  colonization  scheme. 
As  a  further  insight  to  you  of  the  depth  and  extent  of  this  movement  among  the 


free  blacks  themselves,  I  send  you  a  copy  of  the  proceedings  of  a  Convention  heM 
by  the  colored  people  of  the  United  States  and  Canada  as  early  as  1853,  in  which 
the  subject  of  emigration  to  the  West  Indies,  Central  and  South  America,  was 
broached.  And  I  also  transmit  another  pamphlet,  published  early  in  1854,  contain 
ing  a  newspaper  controversy  between  three  of  the  ablest  negro  writers  in  the  country, 
on  the  subject  of  this  self-same  emigration.  This  controversy  was  preliminary  to  the 
'assembling  of  their  organic  Convention  in  the  same  year. 

This  movement,  although  almost  entirely  confined  among  the  blacks,  so  far,  yet 
it  can  boast  some  interested  sympathizers  among  the  whites,  to  whose  attention  it 
has  been  presented,  and  who  only  await  a  more  tangible  and  influential  organization; 
and  a  more  definite  knowledge  of  what  is  to  be  done,  in  order  to  lend  it  a  helping 
hand.  Among  others,  I  may  mention  C.  W.  Elliott,  Esq.,  author  of  a  History  of 
New  England,  and  F.  L.  Olmsted,  Esq.,  author  of  a  recent  work  entitled  Our  Sea 
board  Slave  States.  Numerous  others  can  be  easily  interested;  when  the  subject  has 
been  put  in  working  shape  by  those  who  have  the  practical  ability  to  do  it.  Having 
now  spoken  of  the  extent  of  this  movement  among  the  free  blacks  themselves,  and 
also  referred  to  a  few  sympathizers  it  has  already  invoked  in  an  unostentatious  man 
ner  among  the  whites,  I  now  turn  to  speak  of  the  practical  efforts  this  organization 
has  put  forth  in  pursuance  of  its  objects. 

In  one  year  after  its  organic  Convention,  a  commissioner  was  appointed  by  the 
National  Board  or  Central  Committee  of  the  same,  to  proceed  to  Hayti  on  a  mis 
sion  to  Faustin  First,  for  the  purpose  of  making  and  receiving  propositions  on  the 
subject  of  encouraging  colored  Americana  to  emigrate  to  that  island,  by  holding  a 
conference  thereon  with  the  Haytien  Government.  This  commissioner  went  to 
Port-au-Prince  during  the  summer  of  1855  to  prosecute  his  mission,  and  returned 
and  reported  its  results  at  the  biennial  session  of  this  Board  of  Emigration,  held  in 
Cleveland,  Ohio,  August  26,  27, 1856.  The  commissioner  was  cordially  received  by 
the  Haytien  Government,  and  his  propositions  kindly  entertained  and  considered  5 
but  in  consequence  of  the  domestic  complications  arising  out  of  the  internal  feuds; 
and  the  civil  war  then  brewing  between  Hayti  and  Dominica,  the  Government  of 
the  Emperor  Faustin  was  not  prepared  to  accede  to  or  advance  any  propositions 
on  the  subject  of  this  emigration,  any  further  than  the  announcement  of  the  fact  that 
it  would  be  happy  to  welcome  all  such  emigrants  whenever  they  might  be  pleased 
to  come  to  Hayti. 

The  propositions  submitted  by  the  commissioner  were  substantially  as  follows : 

1.  The  Haytien  Government  was  desired  to  offer  encouragements  to  emigrants  of 
color  coming  to  Hayti,  to  establish  themselves  in  the  mountains  and  valleys  of  that 
island,  to  cultivate  with  their  own  hands  private  homesteads  to  be  donated  to  them 
by  the  Government. 

2.  The  Haytien  Government  to  guaranty  to  these  emigrants  the  enjoyment  and 
equal  civil  and  political  rights  with  the  natives  of  the  country,  and  liberty  of  con 
science  in  religious  worship. 

3.  None  of  the  emigrants  or  their  children  to  do  military  duty  until  seven  years 
after  their  arrival  in  Hayti ;  ministers  of  the  gospel,  physicians,  lawyers,  and  school 
teachers,  to  be  always  exempt  from  that  duty. 

4.  The  Government  to  aid  in  the  erection  of  manufacturing  establishments,  sugar 
refineries,  grist  and  saw  mills,  for  such  emigrants  as  might  be  competent  to  conduct 
such  works.     The  advances  of  the  Government  in  this  respect  to  be  reimbursed  out 
of  the  future  profits  of  these  works. 

5.  The   Government  to  exempt  from  duty  all  materials,  tools,  furniture,   &c., 
brought  or  imported  by  emigrants  in  the  island  for  the  purpose  of  carrying  on  their 
labors. 

6.  The  emigrants  to  become  Haytien  citizens,  invested  with  all  the  privileges; 
prerogatives,  and  immunities  of  the  same,  after  one  year's  residence;  on  taking  the 
oath  of  allegiance. 

7.  The  Haytien  Government  to  appoint  a  commissioner  to  reside  in  the  United 
States  and  co-operate  with  the  National  Board  or  Central  Committee  of  the  Emigra 
tion  Society  in  the  general  supervision  of  the  embarkation  of  the  emigrants  from 
the  United  States. 

8.  On  condition  that  the  Haytien  Government  would  fulfil  the  above  requirements, 
the  National  Board  would  guaranty  a  select  emigration  of  two  hundred  families  or 


37 

one  thousand  persons  per  annum  for  five  years,  and  one  thousand  families 
or  five  thousand  persons  in  addition  thereto,  if  these  governmental  inducements 
should  be  continued  two  years  longer,  After  seven  years  duration,  the  scheme  to 
be  abandoned,  and  left  to  regulate  itself  as  a  voluntary  and  spontaneous  individual 
emigration  thereafter, 

These  propositions  were  left  open  for  the  subsequent  consideration  and  action  of 
the  Haytien  Government.  But  aa  the  Government  has  not  since  responded  any 
further  on  this  subject,  the  prospect  of  a  movement  in  that  direction  remains  in 
statu  quo.  But  whilst  darkness  seems  to  be  still  brooding  over  the  one,  yet  on  the 
other  hand  new  prospects  seem  to  be  dawning  in  the  direction  of  Central  America, 
by  the  bold  and  unequivocal  position  you  have  been  pleased  to  assume  voluntarily, 
in  the  Congress  of  the  United  States.  It  is  fit  that  the  subject  should  be  agitated 
there  by  such  an  able  advocate  as  you  have  proved  yourself  to  be,  in  order  that  it 
may  go  forth  with  a  telling  effect  upon  the  whole  country.  But  opportune  agitation 
in  Congress  in  this  manner  is  all  that  I  believe  can  be  done  for  years  to  come,  with 
our  Government,  on  the  subject.  The  practical  details  of  the  movement  must  now 
be  laid  and  carried  out  in  its  incipiency,  by  a  company  or  an  association  of  private 
individuals,  of  influence,  character,  and  standing,  throughout  the  whole  country,  but 
who  shall  at  the  same  time  be  backed,  animated,  and  cheered,  by  able  supporters 
and  defenders  in  Congress.  This  association  ought  to  be  formed  as  early  as  possi 
ble,  and  when  formed,  it  ought  to  patronize  and  encourage  the  organization  that 
the  colored  people  have  effected  among  themselves  for  this  purpose.  An  intelligent 
and  able  commissioner  ought  to  be  dispatched  in  behalf  of  this  association,  to  enter 
into  stipulations  with  the  Central  American  Government  in  regard  to  these  contem 
plated  emigrants.  And  this  commissioner  might  be  accompanied  by  some  intelli 
gent  colored  man,  to  be  named  by  their  Board  or  Central  Committee,  in  whom  they 
might  repose  the  utmost  confidence,  when  he  brought  back  a  report  of  the  condition, 
prospects,  and  advantages,  of  that  country. 

Arrangements  thus  made  for  emigration,  and  a  pioneer  list  of  emigrants  enrolled, 
consisting  of  agricultural  laborers,  mechanics,  teachers,  and  professional  men,  then 
this  association,  composed  of  distinguished  individuals,  will  invoke  philanthropic 
contributions  of  money,  mechanics'  tools,  and  agricultural  implements,  to  fit  out  and 
facilitate  the  removal  of  such  of  this  number  of  emigrants  aa  might  need  aid  in 
these  respects. 

Thus  prepared,  the  first  expedition  will  sail,  consisting  of  fifty  families,  or  two 
hundred  and  fifty  persons,  and  every  three  months  thereafter,  for  the  ensuing  five 
years,  let  the  same  number  be  quietly  transported.  At  the  end  of  this  period,  I  will 
guaranty  the  most  skeptical  and  prejudiced  will  be  converted  to  the  scheme,  and 
our  Government  will  at  last  feel  the  necessity  of  making  it  a  national  movement,  by 
throwing  in  some  way  her  protecting  aegis  over  this  rapidly-accumulating  portion 
of  her  own  depleted  population,  that  will  then  promise  to  be  so  advantageous  to  her 
in  every  respect,  commercially  and  politically,  in  their  newly-acquired  homes  in  our 
highway  to  the  Pacific.  *  *  * 

KWith  this  hope,  I  remain  your  obedient  servant, 
JAMES  THEODORE  HOLLY, 
NEW  HAVEX,  January,  30,  1858.  Corresponding  Secretary. 

Letter  from  J.  M.  Whitfield,  Editor  of  the  African- American  Repository,  (a  color- 

ed  man.) 

BUFFALO,  NEW  YORK,  Feb.  1,  1858. 

DEAR  SIR  :  Having  read  a  portion  of  your  late  speech  in  Congress  in  favor  of 
colonizing  free  blacks  in  Central  or  South  America,  I  have  taken  the  liberty  of 
addressing  you,  feeling,  as  one  of  that  race,  and  an  advocate  of  the  same  policy,  a 
vital  interest  in  its  success. 

In  August,  1854,  a  Convention  was  held  at  Cleveland  of  those  colored  men  in  fa 
vor  of  emigration  to  the  West  India  islands,  Central  and  South  America.  That 
Convention  organized  a  Board  of  Emigration,  which  appointed  a  commissioner 
(Rev.  J.  T.  Holly,  now  rector  of  St.  Luke's  church,  New  Haven)  to  go  to  Hayti,  and 
confer  with  the  Haytien  Government  upon  the  subject. 

That  Government  expressed  itself  ready  to  offer  the  most  liberal  inducements  to 
emigrants,  and  to  grant  them  every  assistance  in  its  power.  It  was  also  intended 


38 

to  send  a  commissioner  to  the  British  islands,  New  Granada,  and  the  Central 
American  States,  but  for  lack  of  pecuniary  means  were  unable  to  do  so.  And  here, 
allow  me  to  say,  is  one  of  the  curses  of  our  condition  in  this  country  :  we  are  all  so 
miserably  poor  that  we  are  unable  to  help  each  other,  and  so  scattered  that  it  is 
impossible  to  have  union  of  action  even  where  there  is  perfect  unanimity  of  senti 
ment;  so  that  while  there  are  hundreds — yes,  thousands — of  enterprising  and  industri- 
our  colored  men,  ready  and  anxious  to  embark  immediately  in  any  feasible  move 
ment  of  emigration  to  either  of  the  places  named,  the  means  to  commence  such  a 
movement  properly  are  not  attainable  among  them.  *  *  * 

The  Colonization  Society  removes  to  Africa  a  few  hundreds  yearly,  at  an  expense 
•which,  if  judiciously  applied  according  to  the  practical  principles  developed  by  Mr. 
Thayer  in  his  organized  system  of  Kansas  emigration,  would  plant  twice  as  many 
thousands  in  Central  America,  with  everything  requisite  for  their  rapid  progress  ;  and 
the  true  interest  of  both  the  white  and  black  races  seems  to  require  such  a  policy. 

The  fact  is,  the  Saxon  and  negro  are  the  only  positive  races  on  this  continent, 
and  the  two  are  destined  to  absorb  into  themselves  all  the  others  5  and,  like  two 
positive  poles,  they  repel  each  other ;  and  if  the  one  is  destined  to  occupy  all  the 
temperate  regions  of  this  hemisphere,  it  is  equally  certain  that  the  other  will 
predominate  within  the  tropics.  The  Slavery  propagandists  unwittingly  admit 
the  same,  when  they  declare  negro  labor  to  be  indispensable  in  those  regions. 
The  question  which  suggests  itself  to  the  intelligent  mind  is,  shall  things  be 
permitted  and  encouraged  to  reach  their  natural  developments,  which  no  combi 
nation  of  circumstances  can  prevent,  (however  much  it  may  retard  it,)  by  the  peace 
ful  influence  of  free  labor  ?  or  shall  the  Slavery  propagandists  be  allowed  to  inter 
fere  and  check  for  a  time  the  march  of  civilization,  when  the  ultimate  result  must 
be  to  usher  in,  through  Avar  and  anarchy,  the  very  same  state  of  things,  which  might 
have  been  much  sooner  and  easier  reached  by  peaceful  and  legitimate  means,  to  the 
great  benefit  of  the  whole  civilized  world  ?  You  have  answered  the  question  in  a 
manner  which  indicates  the  far-seeing  statesman  as  well  as  the  noble-hearted  phi 
lanthropist,  and  I  sincerely  hope  that  a  majority  of  Congress  may  be  induced  to 
adopt  the  same  just  and  liberal  policy. 

Respectfully,  yours,  J.  M.  WHITFIELD. 


